Campbell River brothers seek owner, origins of crashed drone

The crashed drone is shown. (Nathaniel Gatzke)

It doesn’t have a black box flight recorder, but two Campbell River, B.C., men are hoping they’ll be able to find out what caused a drone they recently discovered to crash, and who the device’s owner may be.

Nathaniel Gatzke posted images on Facebook of the drone that he and his brother came across on June 25 when they were looking for lost fishing lures.

The drone was spotted near the campground along the Quinsam River.

"It was just above the confluence of the Quinsam and the Campbell rivers by about 200 yards," said Gatzke.

"It was actually right in the middle of a seam in the river. We were trying areas where trout and steelhead would be sitting, especially in the wintertime, and we ended up stumbling across it and thought, 'What is this?'" he said.

The drone appears to be a DJI A2S Quadcopter and was found under the water, and definitely appears to have seen better days, says Gatzke.

"It had algae all over it, like the exterior of it," he said. "The whole thing was definitely toast, it will definitely never, never work again."

Gatzke says he left the drone not far from where he and his brother found it, but after talking with CTV News he plans to go back to retrieve the drone again and try and remove the SD card from they device.

The hope is to see if any images can be salvaged and perhaps provide a clue as to who the owner is.

The Campbell River man says he’s never had an expensive camera drone of his own but would be interested in finding out who the drone belonged to and the circumstances behind its plunge into the river.