DigiWaves

Context

The digital transformation of European fisheries is essential to achieving more efficient, transparent and sustainable fisheries management, monitoring, control and surveillance. However, small-scale, long-distance and recreational fisheries still face challenges in accessing digital tools and collecting and integrating data.

DigiWaves will address these challenges by developing digital solutions and an interoperable European fisheries data ecosystem, connecting fishers, public authorities, fisheries control authorities, the scientific community and technology providers.

Objectives

• Develop new approaches to improve existing data collection programmes, optimise the processing of monitoring data and reduce the overall costs of monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS).
• Assess and improve the digital readiness of small-scale, long-distance and recreational fisheries.
• Standardise and harmonise existing data standards, governance frameworks and projects involving automatic catch recording technologies.
• Develop a secure, scalable and interoperable data infrastructure that enables the efficient, real-time collection, integration and analysis of fisheries-dependent data.

Results

DigiWaves aims to develop 13 digital technologies across four areas to support fisheries monitoring, electronic reporting, vessel tracking and data collection.

1. On-board electronic monitoring: On-board cameras and artificial intelligence systems that record and classify catches as they are brought aboard.
2. Vessel monitoring and tracking: Systems that track vessel locations and identify when fishing activities are taking place.
3. Catch recording and data collection: Tools that enable commercial and recreational fishers to record their catches easily and reliably.
4. 3D synthetic data generation pipeline: A cross-cutting infrastructure that generates training images for artificial intelligence systems, reducing the need for thousands of manually labelled photographs.

Case studies

DigiWaves will validate its technologies across three fisheries sectors with different digitalisation needs and challenges: small-scale fisheries, long-distance fisheries and recreational fisheries.

• Small-scale fisheries (SSF). The project will test compact electronic monitoring, vessel tracking and catch recording systems on small-scale fishing vessels in various European regions and Réunion Island.
• Long-distance fisheries (LDF). DigiWaves will evaluate remote electronic monitoring and near-real-time tracking systems on tuna purse seiners operating in the Indian Ocean and fishing vessels in the Falkland Islands.
• Recreational fisheries (RF). The project will test AI-powered mobile applications that identify species and estimate fish size from photographs, generating data that can be incorporated into fish stock assessments.

AZTI´s role

AZTI leads the work package responsible for coordinating the case studies and validating the technologies developed under real-world conditions. This involves collecting and validating data, as well as evaluating the solutions to support their further improvement. As part of this work, AZTI conducts two case studies focusing on small-scale fisheries and long-distance fisheries (tropical tuna fleets), and also contributes to those involving recreational fisheries.

In addition, AZTI leads the development of models for automatic catch identification and contributes to the creation of a data processing infrastructure that will enable these models to run in near real time in small-scale and long-distance fisheries.

Expected impact

DigiWaves will contribute to more efficient, transparent and data-driven fisheries management by improving the collection, integration and analysis of data from small-scale, long-distance and recreational fisheries. Validating these technologies in real-world settings will help advance more interoperable monitoring, control and surveillance systems and facilitate the use of more comprehensive and reliable data for fisheries management and stock assessments.

Website

https://digiwaves.eu/

Participants

Eigen Vermogen van het Instituut voor Landbouw- en Visserijonderzoek – EV ILVO (Belgium); Danmarks Tekniske Universitet – DTU (Denmark); Stichting Wageningen Research – WR (Netherlands); Reframe.food astiki mi kerdoskopiki etairia – RFF (Greece); SINTEF Ocean AS – SO (Norway); Centro de Investigación Marina y Alimentaria AZTI – AZTI (Spain); SCiO IKE – SCiO (Greece); Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries – NDF (Norway); Hellenic Centre for Marine Research – HCMR (Greece); ARMEMENT ENEZ DU – ENEZ (La Réunion); Zunibal SL – ZUN (Spain); Sinay – SINAY (France); Anchor Lab – ANCHOR (Denmark); University of St. Andrews – USTAN (Scotland); Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science – CEFAS (England); Electronic Fish Information Centre Europe B.V. – EFICE (Netherlands); Collecte Localisation Satellites – CLS (France); World Wildlife Fund, Mediterranean – WWF MED (Italy – International); WWF European Policy Programme – WWF EPO (Belgium); World Wide Fund for Nature Greece – WWF GR (Greece); ADIGO Mechatronics – ADIGO (Norway); Danmarks fiskeriforening producers organisation – DFPO (Denmark)

Funding