Dave Brooks at Granite Geek alerts us to low-flying research that echoes, distantly, the Ig Nobel Prize-winning innovation of using a remote-control helicopter to gather whale snot. The University of New Hampshire news service reports:
To survey pits dug by horseshoe crabs in the sediments of the Great Bay Estuary, researchers attached a small camera onto a model airplane. This novel approach allowed University of New Hampshire graduate student Wan-Jean Lee to determine the extent of the horseshoe crab impacts without having to mar the sediments by walking over them. Lee, a Ph.D. candidate in zoology, stood on the bank at Adams Point in Durham, directing Joshua Idjadi, assistant professor of biology at Eastern Connecticut State University, as he maneuvered the plane over certain areas and at various altitudes by remote control….