NOAA Fisheries looking for AI solutions to improve fishery surveys

A diver conducts towboard surveys at Midway Atoll
A diver conducts towboard surveys at Midway Atoll | Photo courtesy of NOAA Fisheries.
4 Min

NOAA Fisheries is looking for large-scale imagery and artificial intelligence products that can supplement or replace the way it is currently conducting its fishery surveys, according to a request for information (RFI) put out for the agency’s Optics Strategic Initiative (OSI) Working Group.

NOAA Fisheries currently relies on a fleet of research vessels, chartered fishing vessels, planes, and autonomous vehicles to collect data for its surveys. However, all those efforts depend on human observers who can sift through the images and data to provide counts.

“Traditional methods of identification rely heavily on manual observation by trained experts, which are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to errors,” NOAA Fisheries noted in the RFI.

The promise of artificial intelligence applications is that they can automate that time-consuming work, processing millions of images of fish and other marine life quickly to create useful insights for researchers.

NOAA Fisheries has established multiple strategic initiatives to accelerate the adoption of advanced technologies in its various surveys, and the Optics Strategic Initiative will aim to implement “large-scale image collection, processing, and storage; complement, optimize, and replace existing ship- and aircraft-based surveys; automate data-processing pipelines; and provide novel, mission-improving metrics.”

OSI represents all of NOAA’s Fisheries Science Centers and the agency’s Office of Science and Technology in pursuing these goals.

OSI-funded projects will improve the agency’s machine learning-assisted image-processing pipelines and hybrid cloud processing capacity, and the upgraded tools will be incorporated into surveys. The working group is looking for solutions that can help its surveys of fish, marine mammals, benthics habitats, and plankton.

While the RFI does not guarantee the government will put out an official solicitation, NOAA Fisheries anticipates issuing multiple awards valued between USD 250,000 and USD 500,000 (EUR 230,000 and EUR 460,000). OSI said it intends to support efforts to “improve access to optical survey and analysis tools, including investments in low-cost acquisition hardware, edge AI bearing payloads and [unmanned systems] platforms ... and a portfolio of [high-technology readiness level] applications of these tools.”

OSI will host a workshop 5 to 6 November on the topic and will set up one-on-ones with vendors based on responses to the RFI.

As part of the OSI Working Group’s ongoing efforts to improve imagery collection for artificial intelligence applications, NOAA Fisheries recently issued government contractor WaTech a USD 471,000 (EUR 434,000) contract to upgrade the resolution of the shadowgraph camera systems it attaches to autonomous underwater gliders to monitor zooplankton off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The agency has already procured eight of the highly specialized cameras, but OSI determined the technology needed higher resolution to be integrated with artificial intelligence applications.

NOAA Fisheries has been keen to use advanced technologies to support its operations. The agency has experimented with using uncrewed surface vessels to collect data around offshore wind sites where its traditional survey vessels cannot operate effectively. NOAA Fisheries has also explored using artificial intelligence for electronic monitoring, another area where manual review of videos and images is time-consuming. In 2023, NOAA Fisheries partnered with Mississippi State University-Northern Gulf Institute and Kitware Inc. on developing an artificial intelligence application that can automatically process video and imagery to detect fish, track species movements, and annotate videos for researchers.


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