00:00Bjørtsford is a remote fishing village on Norway's northernmost coast, far beyond the
00:07Arctic Circle.
00:08Though home to just a couple of thousand residents, it's a vital local hub for the fishing industry.
00:14This vessel sets out to seize a brief window between two Arctic storms for a chance of
00:19finding a good catch in these cold, unpredictable waters.
00:24It can be tough. It can be tough, especially in the autumn and winters. The weather is
00:29very unpredictable, very cold. Of course, of course, it can be very bumpy. We work when
00:35it's fish to catch, so it doesn't matter what time of the day it is. Day or night, it's
00:40all the same to us.
00:46This fishing vessel uses a large net to catch massive amounts of fish at once. A good day
00:52could bring in 30 tons of catch. Cod makes the most money, but the nets pull up a mix
00:57of fish species. Unwanted fish can't just be thrown back into the sea. Each of the species
01:04needs to be weighed and logged separately. Inspections can happen any time, and any mistakes
01:09in catch reporting could have serious consequences, including big fines and reduced quota.
01:15The fishing industry in Norway is strictly regulated, so it's very important for us to
01:22have the exact number of what we catch so we can report it to the government. If we
01:27make a mistake, in the worst case scenario, they will take the whole catch away from us.
01:31So that means that all the work we've done catching the fishes is wasted.
01:36But how do you weigh tons of different fish quickly and accurately? Usually, fishers estimate
01:43the total weight by counting containers filled with the fish. But this vessel has a new device
01:48designed to make catch counting easier and more precise. Still in development, the catch
01:53scanner uses AI to identify fish species' size and weight as they move along the conveyor
01:59belt. The aim is to make the process as automatic as possible.
02:04New digital tools on fishing vessels can do much more than just count the catches. Europe
02:10is stepping up its fight against illegal fishing, both at home and around the world. In the
02:16next few years, this will lead to major technological innovations in fishery monitoring, control
02:22and surveillance. Under-reporting of catches can lead to overfishing, harming fish stocks
02:28and ecosystems. The catch scanner is part of Every Fish, a European project developing
02:33smart catch recording tools. It's led by Rachel Tiller, Chief Scientist at Sintef Ocean in Trondheim.
02:41We need to know what's going on out there so that we can solve all of these different
02:46crises. So the climate crisis, biodiversity crisis, we need to have more knowledge about
02:52the ocean. We're looking at a number of different developments in camera technology and machine
02:57vision, artificial intelligence, trying to come up with solutions to put on fishing vessels,
03:02sensors that can help us to automatically record all the fish that come out of the sea.
03:10There are many engineering challenges ahead. For catch scanners to be truly useful, they
03:14must be highly reliable and accurate. Fishers, controllers and scientists need to trust the
03:19data produced by AI on board. To meet this goal, Every Fish researchers have developed
03:28open source AI methods to identify fish species and estimate weights. The engineers work closely
03:34with fishers to ensure their solutions meet real world needs and perform well on rocking
03:39boats in cold, salty seas. It's really important to get the feedback from the industry, from
03:46the vessels, to be able to shape what we are working with here at the lab. If we don't
03:50have that kind of feedback, then we might just go in the wrong direction. To count catches
03:56on smaller boats, researchers are developing computer vision systems that can identify
04:01and measure individual fish in a pile. This could allow artisan and hobby fishers to scan
04:07their catches using CCTV cameras or even smart phones. The same technology could even guide
04:12robotic arms to sort out and handle the catch, taking over some of the hardest manual tasks.
04:21There's a lot of hard labour in the fishing industry in general, so it's hard on the shoulders,
04:24hard on the back, you have to stay leaned over a table, you have to work with the fish.
04:29What you can do is you can perhaps automate some of these processes with robotic arms,
04:34and a clue to doing so is to have good vision systems that are able to parse and understand
04:38the scenes that they're looking at. Onboard surveillance cameras are often used to combat
04:44illegal fishing and other violations. In places like the Seychelles, monitoring officers regularly
04:50review onboard footage to ensure fishers follow the rules. In Europe, video surveillance will
04:55have to comply with strict privacy and data protection laws.
05:02Many fishers are already really sceptical of the system of having some kind of camera
05:07onboard their vessel, and it's absolutely understandable. I would be sceptical as well
05:11if my boss wanted to install a camera in my office. So we are developing systems that
05:17will automatically blur out identifiable elements of humans, so we can comply with GDPR regulations
05:25and also with a sense of personal space. The EU will require surveillance cameras on
05:31high-risk vessels, as well as satellite tracking systems on all fishing boats. These tools
05:36help European Fisheries Control Agency officers in Vigo and Spain monitor fishing and coordinate
05:41inspections. The signal is going to satellite, later down to our systems, and what we have
05:49we can see on the screen. Here we have our vessels, here we have fishing vessels, so
05:54we can count time, how much we needed to get in position. With more fishing vessels getting
06:02equipped with trackers, control centres will have much more data to process. Computer algorithms
06:07can help sift through it all and flag anything suspicious. We have also some automatic tools
06:13that can perform some analysis, for example related with the closed area or the fisheries
06:18restricted areas we have, for example, in the Mediterranean Sea. One of these areas
06:23is the very well-known the Jacuba, Pomopitaria in the Adriatic Sea, where we have some algorithms
06:28defined in order to raise some alerts or some warnings in case of a vessel accessing this
06:35area with certain speed, which could be associated to a potential fishing activity. While digital
06:42tools like cameras and AI are valuable additions to fishery monitoring, experts caution they
06:48have limitations and can sometimes fail. The EU's push for stricter oversight combines
06:53traditional inspections with these new technologies. The surge of digital data is meant to make
06:58fishing more sustainable and fair. I always call it a tsunami of data that will come in.
07:05We will have to look at how we work with that data, which technologies we can use to translate
07:11this data into usable and actionable outputs. We can for that use artificial intelligence,
07:20algorithms, automatic behaviour monitoring tools. All this is very nice, but at the end
07:26of the day, despite all this technology, you will still need the professional input from
07:31the fishery inspector. Digital technology can give fishers handy new tools so they can
07:38spend more time fishing and less time filling forms. It also helps scientists find new ways
07:44to protect the health of our oceans, while making it easier for fishery controllers to
07:48ensure there's plenty of fish in the sea for years to come.
Comments