Whale sharks are efficient eating machines, sucking in plankton and tiny fish as they cruise along with open mouths. They’re also the inspiration for an autonomous watercraft that can navigate coastal waters and essentially vacuum up plastics, oil, and other floating debris.

Invented and manufactured by RanMarine, a Dutch environmental technology company, the WasteShark drone can gobble up to a kilogram of garbage per minute. If deployed five days a week, it could remove 15.6 tons of waste a year from a waterway, the company calculates. Nor does it pollute or harm sea life—a major plus. Plastic collected by the drone will be turned into pellets to manufacture new products, such as kayaks, according to Sky News.

WasteShark, whose battery can operate for eight hours on one charge, has been successfully piloted in six countries, most recently in England, where it removed waste from Ilfracombe Harbor in North Devon. Despite its bioinspired source, WasteShark looks more like a small, upside-down dinghy than any kind of fish—including the robotic marauder in Jaws.

This article originally appeared in the summer 2019 issue of ASEE’s Prism magazine and was written by chief correspondent Thomas K. Grose.

Filed under: Special Features

Tags: ASEE Prism magazine, bioinspired design, Environmental Engineering, marine debris, RanMarine, wasteshark