Australian fishermen hook offshore tuna with help from aerial drone
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Sydney - Two Australian fishermen used an aerial drone to drop a baited hook 350 metres offshore, where they nabbed a 20-kilogram longtail tuna, media reports said Wednesday.
Jaiden Maclean, 26, attached a 500-metre-long fishing line to a drone and flew it out to sea from Fingal Head beach on Australia's eastcoast searching for a school of tuna.
His friend Byron Leal, 36, let the reel run while Maclean watched the drone's live feed on his computer screen, the West Australian newspaper reported.
Maclean had attached a special catch to the line that allowed him to lower the bait into a school of tuna and release the line when he saw they had hooked a fish.
Leal then reeled in the tuna 350 metres to the cheers of onlookers.
Maclean uploaded the video to his YouTube account, where it attracted 600,000 views within days, and millions more on Facebook re-posts.
Maclean told The West Australian he was "blown away" by the reaction.
"I've been getting hit up by people all around the world with business opportunities and marketing plans and all sorts of weird stuff," he was quoted as saying. Some people accused them of cheating, but Maclean said the process was harder than it seemed.
"It took us days to land a tuna," he said.
"The drone has a range of 2 kilometres, and your typical reel would have 300 to 500 metres of line on it. You are limited by how much line you have on the reel," he said.
- DPA
