3-6 SS Hexicopter

 Counting salmon on the Snake River. Idaho Power has an investment in the environment and as such they even employ a fish biologist. His name is Phil Groves, he’s a senior fishery biologist and he counts salmon nests  in Idaho waterways amongst one of his duties. Well he found a fabulous tool, a remotely flown helicopter, just like a drone, to safely help with his job. He calls it a hexicopter. “Traditionally we would do our read surveys from a helicopter, we would be flying about 250 m in the air, and you can see the salmon nests on the river bottom quite plainly. They are large, oval areas that have been cleaned off by the female fish. Traditionally in the past we were able to do our read counts by hand. We could tally them up on a sheet of paper. More recently the number of reds have blossomed quite a bit, the population of fish has exploded, we are seeing into the thousands of reds as opposed to hundreds of reds in the past. Now with the hexacopter, we are flying at a lower elevation, typically between 20 and 40 m, and taking high definition video as well as photographs that we can actually watch over and over again and share with other researchers. We can  pause video, we get a more accurate count now.