As the Title suggests, a bit more in depth how it could look like:

Special Pet with it's own unique Special Skill (Like the Hedgehog for example), that has maybe 5x or even 10x times the Range of a normal Pet, but a much longer Pickup Cooldown to keep the Balance.

This would make it perfect for Sea Monster Hunting, so you don't have to get your Ship to 100% on top of the Monster you just killed, which can be really annoying at times, especially with not maxed out blue Gear and slow turning speeds.

Thanks for reading my Thoughts on this.

They had autoloot in the hardcore server, just add it to boats.

they have this Bird

They should honestly just allow you to use more than one long-range pick up pet. The drawback of it is that it takes longer for it to collect loot than the normal range ones.

However, auto loot just for the ocean sounds far more appealing.

We don't need a pet for this. Make it a crew member that loots long ranges from your ship.