In 2013 Maine fishermen, NGOs and an EM provider began a three-year EM pilot in the New England groundfish fishery. The premise will sound familiar to others exploring EM: Accurate discard accounting is important for science and management, but is already costly, and is unlikely to get cheaper using only human observers—there must be a better way.
The questions: Could accurate discard information (species and length) be collected using cameras in this fishery? What would it take to do that? And finally; could the price get driven down to a manageable level? The short answers are yes; takes collaboration; and it depends. For all the details and some comparison data check out the full report.
