Digimar, progress towards a more efficient fishing activity

• Eight Opromar surface longline vessels, seven in the Pacific and one in the South Atlantic, have installed and validated this system, which provides an integrated view of oceanographic and meteorological information to optimize routes.

Marin, June 16, 2023. The Organization of Fishing Producers of the Port and Estuary of Marín (Opromar), promoter of the Digimar initiative, in which Marine Instruments and AZTI have also collaborated, has announced to its associates the results of this new tool to improve the fishing activity. Results that have surprised everyone, since the eight vessels that have participated in the pilot program have seen their activity facilitated thanks to the recommendations of the research team that makes up Digimar.

In response to requests from its partners to find a tool that would allow them greater efficiency in their activity, Opromar contacted several leading research centers such as Marine Instruments and AZTI to develop a new system to improve fishing activity through digitization. Thus was born, in December 2021, the Digimar project, a novel project that has successfully passed the pilot test on eight of the organization’s vessels, all surface longliners.

The system, called “MarineView”, provides an integrated and operational display of oceanographic and meteorological information to analyze conditions in the remote areas of the ocean in which they operate. In order to make it fully operational, the bridge crew of the participating ships was trained in the use of the software developed by Marine Instruments for the correct visualization of the data layers. During these months, AZTI interpreted all the information received from these eight ships -focusing on the Pacific and South Atlantic areas-. In this way, the fleet received indications to optimize the routes and, in this way, optimize the effort.

Results obtained

Within the initial objective of implementing in Opromar’s fleet a tool to improve the fishing activity, Digimar has managed to advance in important achievements oriented to a more efficient activity and a more sustainable fishing:

• Optimize navigation routes based on current information, allowing to reduce route time and energy consumption.
• Facilitating fishing activity based on scientific information.
• Achieve more selective fishing, reducing environmental impact and energy consumption.
• To have more oceanographic knowledge to advance in the minimization of by-catches associated with fishing activity, improving specificity thanks to the prior identification of areas of fishing interest.

The Digimar project is financed by the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and the EU Next Generation European Funds.