Optimisation of digital catch monitoring and reporting in European Fisheries

OptiFish will strive to provide technological solutions that will simultaneously improve the sustainability of fisher’s operations, enhance control processes and strengthen society’s trust in their products.OptiFish will develop, test and recommend a set of innovative technologies and tools supported by artificial intelligence (AI) to provide the management, the fishing sector and the scientist with data on catch volumes, catch compositions and the fishing environment.

The goal is to unlock the full potential of technologies such as electronic and genetic monitoring for automated species recognition based on AI and computer vision to reduce discards, unreported landings and unreported fishing activities, ultimately establishing a fisheries control and enforcement system fit for the digital age.

The technologies are not enough alone, it is also critical to consider the combination of technologies and the integration of computer vision models, the wide range of data sources and their subsequent formats, while also addressing stakeholders needs and acceptance.

This goal cannot be achieved by a single project, which is why the aim of OptiFish is to lay a solid foundation for full technological development from which other projects and initiatives can be built.

The project will place a strong focus on species recognition in different fisheries equipped with distinctly different catch handling facilities and in different European sea basins.

To ensure that these innovations are relevant to fisheries management, OptiFish has participation from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, and has received written support from the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA), the Basque, Danish and Belgian Fisheries authorities.