HONOLULU (HI Now) - UN Sustainable Goal 14.4 set the target that by 2020, the world would effectively regulate destructive fishing practices and implement science-based management plans for fisheries to ensure fish stocks relied upon by millions of people for livelihoods and dietary protein produce their maximum sustainable yields.
Today, Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a multi-billion dollar problem involving as many as 1 in 5 wild caught fish.
Sustainable fisheries use an ecosystem-based management approach involving an understanding of:
- the impact of fishing activities
- the costs of fishing
- the economic and social benefits of fishing
- the environment beyond the control of the fishery
A sustainable fishery management plan relies on having timely and accurate information to inform decision-making.
Electronic monitoring is a technology that sustainable fisheries can use to gather information supporting informed-decision making. This technology involves a camera system and recording equipment installed on the participating fishing vessel which records fishing activity onboard the vessel. Video files are transferred to trained personnel on shore who review the video to count fish, examine target and non-target species that are caught, track interactions with protected species, and determine compliance with fishing regulations for the fishery. However, this process can take weeks or months to deliver information at substantial costs.
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Further with over 400,000 fishing vessels worldwide having monitoring needs, the current approach would generate over 10,000,000 hours of video each year for review by only a few thousand trained personnel.
Fishery Management of the Future has an AI Opportunity.
At Ai.Fish they collaborate with fisheries to create software and algorithm solutions that can provide cost-effective, timely, and accurate information to support fishery management.
For fisheries who already have adopted electronic monitoring, they provide an API that can be used to integrate existing software with our algorithms. Our AI has demonstrated human-level accuracy when compared with human reviewers at approximately half the cost of traditional review.
Ai.Fish offers a web-based cloud software application for AI-assisted electronic monitoring video review for new fisheries adopting electronic monitoring technology. This software features the ability to rapidly obtain review results and examine them aggregated across applicable vessels or target species for key management insights.
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Finally, they’re developing an onboard system that provides real-time electronic monitoring analysis while vessels are at sea and transmits key analytics to on shore teams for immediate decision-making by fishing boat captains and fishery management teams to support sustainable fishing.
For more information, visit www.ai.fish
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