CEFAS21-109: Provision of R&D for a cetacean bycatch electronic monitoring solution

Cefas is developing a fisher-led approach to better monitor cetacean bycatch, with a primary focus on gillnet fisheries in the South-west of the UK. As part of this initiative, Cefas is pursuing the development of an affordable, scalable and flexible cetacean bycatch electronic monitoring (EM) solution. By using on-deck voice recognition technology and advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI), our ambition is to advance current EM solutions to the next level. The requirement is to develop and produce the Insight360 EM system (including hardware, software & machine learning), deploy aboard participating commercial fishing vessels and to undertake sea trials of the Insight360 EM system, involving up to 10 vessels from fishing ports in the South-west of the UK, with modifications made to sequentially improve the system. A full report and evaluation on the performance and accuracy from sea-trials of the Insight360 EM system is also required.