SMARTFISH

Objective

The objective of SMARTFISH is to develop, test and promote a suite of high-tech systems for the EU fishing sector, to optimize resource efficiency, to improve automatic data collection for fish stock assessment, to provide evidence of compliance with fishery regulations and to reduce ecological impact.

SMARTFISH exploits technological developments in machine vision, camera technology, data processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data analysis, smartphones/tablets, LED technology, acoustics and ROV technology to build systems for monitoring, analyzing and improving processes for all facets of the fishing sector, from extraction, to assessment, to monitoring and control.

The SMARTFISH systems will:

• Assist fishermen in making informed decisions during pre-catch, catching, and post-catch phases of the extraction process. This improves catch efficiencies and compositions in fisheries across the EU, leading to improved economic efficiency while reducing unintended fish mortality, unnecessary fishing pressure and ecosystem damage.
• Provide new data for stock assessment from commercial fishing and improve the quality and quantity of data that comes from traditional assessment surveys. This provides more accurate assessment of currently assessed stocks and allow the assessment of data-poor stocks.
• Permit the automatic collection of catch data to ensure compliance with fisheries management regulations.

AZTI coordinates the Work Package 1 in which acoustic and optical technologies for size discrimination and identification of species in purse seine fisheries will be developed and tested. In addition, AZTI also participates in the development of hardware and software infrastructure for the acquisition of scientific and fishing data, and in the coordination of testing of technologies in the purse seine and trawl fleets of the Gulf of Bizkaia.