PULLMAN, Wash — Drone footage is helping scientists up the salmon count.
A Washington State University (WSU) press release states that drone footage can help during salmon spawning season. During salmon spawning season, the Wenatchee River hosts rocky hollows for salmon to lay their eggs, also called "redds,".
Using the drone footage, researchers at WSU can count how many rocky hollows salmon make in the river to lay their eggs and anticipate their population in the coming season.
“These technologies will give us more data to really find out if what we’re doing is working,” said Alex Fremier, study co-author and an associate professor in the WSU School of the Environment in a press release. “A drone provides a bird’s eye view and high-resolution images. Because we can get so much information from these images, we could be more cost effective and help determine if a restoration project helped build salmon habitat.”
Before using drone footage, researchers would count the number of hollows in the river by walking up and down the river. This would help researchers estimate the number of salmon and eggs to expect at the end of the spawning season.
“There’s no denying that salmon populations are in decline, so we want to do the best job and use the best technology that we can to help this species out,” said Daniel Auerbach, a WSU doctoral candidate in a press release. “While ground redd counts are less intrusive than other counts, drones are even less invasive, and we can use these images for many things.”
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