WasteSharks are making a splash in Toronto Harbour. This is what they do

There’s something lurking in the Toronto Harbour with an insatiable appetite for…garbage.

On Wednesday, PortsToronto announced the Canadian debut of its new aquadrone pilot project which uses the Dutch-made WasteShark to help clean up trash.

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“They're about the size of a small kitchen table and they have a capacity of 180 litres, so each of them in a day can capture 1,100 lbs of debris,” PortsToronto spokesperson Jessica Pellerin told CTV News Toronto in an interview.

PortsToronto acquired the two WasteSharks, dubbed Ebb and Flow following a public naming contest earlier this year, through a grant supported by the Netherlands foreign affairs ministry.

Pellerin said the company behind the aquadrone, RanMarine, had heard of the success of PortsToronto’s so-called Trash Trapping Program and wanted to get involved with what she describes as a Roomba vacuum for the water.

Since 2019, the garbage collecting program, in partnership with the University of Toronto, has been making waves with the Australian-made Seabins -- which sit on the water’s surface and suck trash into a catch bag with a pump.

• READ MORE: Lake Ontario overflowing with microplastics, researchers find

So far, Pellerin says those bins have removed hundreds of thousands of pieces of microplastics and other junk from the harbour, of which PortsToronto has started to categorize over the last two years.

The WasteSharks will add to that effort and can be controlled via remote control or programmed to operate autonomously for up to six hours at a time.

A WasteShark is seen in the water at Toronto Harbour on August 9, 2023. (PortsToronto)

The device, which moves slowly enough as to not trap unsuspecting fish, birds, or waterfowl, returns to what’s called a “shark cage” when it’s full and its contents are emptied out on land.

“Because of our partnership with the ‘Trash Team,’ we're going to be able to tell what types of materials the WasteSharks collects, how much material they collect, etc. So we’ll have some data to play with at the end of the season to help us determine what worked well and what didn't.

Ebb and Flo will be based out of the Outer Harbour Marina in the Port Lands and wade around Toronto Harbour and waterfront catching any piece of trash that crosses their paths.