Invasive Pest Control
Kevin Ellard from the Department of Primary Industries, Tasmania wrote a valuable report on using ROVs for marine pest surveillance.
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“Over recent years, the capabilities of small underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) have improved significantly and reduced in cost. They are now considered useful additions to invasive marine species surveillance programs."
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The report is very comprehensive, and includes detailed evaluation on eight remotely operated vehicles available in the market at the time (2019). Mr. Ellards’ findings were the reason why X-Calibre has so many of the desired properties. Down Deep Drones used this report to refine and purpose build an ROV.
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Rogue Urchins
Down Deep Drones have made significant progress in using our own tools on our ROVs and other commercially available underwater drones for the purpose of controlling, and also culling invasive marine species.
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An example of this is our rogue urchin culler. In Tasmania the Long Spined Urchin Centrostephanus rodgersii has thrived in the warming waters and is aggressively over-grazing on seaweed. We have made an urchin culler and hopefully with support from the Tasmanian Authorities we will gain a permit to test the efficacy of the tool.
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We believe that this could also be used to cull LIon Fish, and look forward to hearing from anyone interested in this aspect of our work. As an idea one unit including an underwater drone and culling tool would be $6,700
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Crown of Thorns Starfish Injector
We have a COTS injector on an underwater drone. Whilst still a prototype we have to date been unable to test it due to lack of interest from various government bodies that we contacted in Cairns, Queensland. It markets for around $9000 including the underwater drone and the injector. Please contact us if you are interested.