SAFET Virtual Conference: New Models, New Applications: Recent advances in fisheries electronic monitoring

New and emerging technologies are helping to solve some of the most serious challenges we face in fisheries today. Many of these challenges center on the need to improve the link between fishermen and managers by increasing fishery monitoring levels globally. Efforts to reduce monitoring costs in fisheries with high levels of accountability while enabling monitoring in fisheries where monitoring is currently limited due to operational or institutional constraints are ongoing and advances in camera based electronic monitoring programs are playing a key role. Two key technological advances are the use of machine learning techniques to help convert large amounts of video and GPS data into a management ready format through the video review process and improvements in the ways that data are transmitted from the vessel to managers.

Increasing monitoring levels is just one piece of the puzzle—improving the link between vessels and scientists/managers also relies on improving the types and quality of data that are collected, the ways that these data are integrated, compiled and analyzed to generate scientific knowledge, benefits for fishermen and other ocean industries and the timeliness with which data are available for use. These advances are not only improving fishery management through better understanding of stock status and the impact of fishing on ecosystems which can increase the performance of catch limits and ensure high and sustainable levels of harvest, but will help to pave the way to enabling adaptive, near real time fisheries management, something that can potentially increase fishermen’s access to fishery resources and which is also essential to strengthening fisheries climate resilience.

The first session of the 2020/2021 SAFET Virtual Conference: New Models, New Applications: Advances in Fisheries Electronic Monitoring aims to foster and engage the community of practitioners, technology providers, industry members, scientists and others working in this space through an interactive and informative session that presents some of the latest implementations in this field and allows ample opportunity for dialogue between participants. This session will be immediately followed by a virtual technology expo which provides opportunities for technology service providers to engage with conference participants.