Environmental Defense Fund recently released Requests for Proposals for four pilot projects based in the Western U.S. and Alaska. These pilots aim to demonstrate the efficiency, efficacy, and practical implications of various ‘smart’ technologies for solving common fishery challenges. Details of the pilots follow:
Underwater Smart Cameras to Enable Real Time Bycatch Avoidance
Point of contact: Christopher Cusack (ccusack@edf.org)
Term: June 1st, 2019 to September 15th, 2019 with possible extension
Full RFP: [link]
- Work with EDF and fishermen partners to design, implement, and test a set of AI tools and physical technologies to improve the automatic identification of real time bycatch in trawl fisheries
- Analyze existing video footage to quantify the potential of an AI protocol to automatically identify salmon in the Alaska pollock fishery
- Provide, install, and maintain an underwater camera system on a single trawl net (fishery location TBD) that can record high quality video footage of catch entering or passing through a trawl net
- Develop an AI protocol to automatically identify species of interest
Rockfish Hook and Line Electronic Monitoring
Point of contact: Melissa Mahoney (mmahoney@edf.org)
Term: June 1st, 2019 to September 15th, 2019 with possible extension
Full RFP: [link]
- Test EM systems that can serve small scale fisheries and be swapped easily across vessels
- Provide, install, and maintain at least one EM system on a lease basis (with possibility of future purchase). EM system should be transferrable, include geospatial referencing capabilities, and ability for data to be wirelessly uploaded via cellular or satellite network.
Machine Vision for Species Identification and Enumeration
Point of contact: Christopher Cusack (ccusack@edf.org)
Term: June 1st, 2019 to September 15th, 2019 with possible extension
Full RFP: [link]
- Provide, install, and maintain a single camera-based machine vision system that is capable of automatically identifying and counting discarded species that go over a conveyor belt on a single trawl vessel based out of Warrenton, OR
- Co-design a catch handling protocol that enables the effective integration of the camera based machine vision system into the catch handling protocol
Smart Cameras for Wireless Transmission and Activity Recognition
Point of contact: Christopher Cusack (ccusack@edf.org)
Term: June 1st, 2019 to September 15th, 2019 with possible extension
Full RFP: [link]
- Provide, install, and maintain a camera based EM system on up to two vessels participating in the shoreside component of the Pacific whiting fishery and one vessel participating in the bottom trawl groundfish fishery
- Systems that utilize cellular networks, long range Wi-Fi, or satellite networks will be considered; all data collected must be transmitted wirelessly
- Provide secure and readily accessible cloud based data storage for all data collected
- Develop an activity recognition protocol that is capable of identifying fishing events of interest and integrate with a function to parse video and sensor data
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Midnight EST, May 13th, 2019
Please submit all bids to kfairman@edf.org. For questions related to the RFP, email the person of contact (listed under each RFP description) no later than Midnight EST, May 10th, 2019.
