New Project! Unsupervised sizing of fish at landing

FOTOPEIX 1.0 is an ongoing project funded by PROGRAMA PLEAMAR-FUNDACIÓN BIODIVERSIDAD that aims to develop technological tools to automatically determine the average size of fish in images of fish boxes when they are landed by fishers. At the moment it processes images from several fishing ports of the island of Majorca of one single species.

Systematic data on catch sizes allows for a substantial improvement in fisheries management by increasing accuracy and precision of the predictions from management models. Fisheries’ local authorities at the Balearic Islands (Direcció General de Pesca del Govern de les IIles Balears) in collaboration with IMEDEA, is developing an integrated system (integrated traceability unit, IUT) that allows weighing and labeling each of the fish boxes just at landing. To this end, IUTs are being deployed at several ports of the Balearic Islands.

Each IUT includes a camera that is activated automatically at the time of weighing. In addition, the IUT allows the fisherman to assign each box to a commercial category and generate the corresponding identification label, which ensures traceability. Images are immediately transmitted.

This integrated system of labeling and data collection, which is a pioneer in Spain will not only improve traceability and promote the local product, but also opens up many possibilities for obtaining high quality data, which in turn may improve the management of the artisanal fisheries.

The transcendence and appliability of this initiative, which extends conceptually and temporarily far beyond FOTOPEIX, requires a careful approximation by steps. Thus, the 12-month execution period will be dedicated exclusively:

(1) To develop and test an unsupervised mathematical algorithm that extracts the sizes from images of a single pilot species from images of each one of the fish boxes landed in Majorca ports,

(2) To implement the necessary architecture to store and manage all the information generated and

(3) To disseminate the positive implications of the implementation of the IUTs for the entire fishing sector.

INTERESTED? amaya@imedea.uib-csic.es