Nets capable of keeping fish in the sea

Nets capable of keeping fish in the sea

By Kristina Sobol

Budrigannews.com – Life is being wiped out of our oceans by commercial fishing. Dolphins and turtles are also being entangled in the enormous nets of trawlers, which are catching fish at a rate faster than stocks can replenish.

In 2017, more than a third of the world’s fish stocks were deemed overfished. While the issue is most severe in developing nations, the European Union hopes that investing in technology will assist in resolving the issue in its waters.

It is supporting the Norwegian company SINTEF Ocean-led SmartFish H2020 project, which collaborates with fishing companies, technology providers, and universities to develop equipment to lessen the impact of the industry on marine life.

SmartGear, a brand-new kind of trawling net, is one of the innovations it is testing. It uses LED lights of varying intensities and colors to make sounds and draw only the fish it wants into the net, causing other fish to swim away.

Rachel Tiller, senior research scientist at SINTEF Ocean, tells “We want to make life easier for the fishers.” We lack data, which is the issue. We need to find out how many fish are in the ocean because we don’t know how many.

By scanning the fish that are being brought aboard a vessel with lasers, SINTEF is attempting to close that gap. CatchScanner is yet another technology that is being tested. It generates a color image of the fish in three dimensions, which is then analyzed by AI to determine the species and estimate the fish’s weight.

Additionally, CatchScanner may assist in combating rule-breaking; In addition to catching fish of the wrong species and size, some fishing vessels exceed EU quotas. By automatically storing catch information in a database and making it accessible to authorities like national coastguard agencies, CatchScanner could prevent this.

The fishing industry employs approximately 75,000 people in Europe. The European Maritime and Fisheries Fund set aside €6.4 billion ($7.6 billion) for projects like SmartFish to modernize fisheries, monitor quotas, collect data about commercial species, and create sustainable jobs in light of rising seafood demand and rising pressure on marine life.

The spokesperson for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries at the European Commission, Vivian Loonela, asserts, “Our idea is to fully digitalize along the supply chain.” She says that innovations like SmartFish could be helpful. We are utilizing the potential of AI and machine learning because we require intelligent technologies.

The success of the SmartFish innovations will be determined by market demand, and the European Union cannot force its member states to adopt them. Tiller, on the other hand, claims that numerous European fishing businesses have expressed interest. It can be very expensive to install some of these technologies on fishing vessels, she says. Therefore, the fishers must perceive the advantages before they will want them aboard.

With his company Larrasmendi Bi, fisherman Aitor Larraaga will soon test the SmartGear trawl net off the coast of Spain.

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He believes that the fishing industry must innovate to become more sustainable and is enthusiastic about smart technology. “The world is changing,” he says. We are unable to function as we did 200 years ago.