OptiFish aims to deliver innovative technological solutions that simultaneously enhance the sustainability of fishing operations, strengthen monitoring and control processes, and build greater societal trust in fisheries products. To implement its work programme, OptiFish pursues the following key objectives:
1) Establish a comprehensive overview of the current methods, tools, and systems required at fleet level to enable an effective and economically viable European fisheries monitoring and control system.
2) Develop a GDPR-compliant control and enforcement system capable of identifying and reporting regulatory violations through automated catch reporting and monitoring of fishing activities, thereby helping to prevent practices such as discarding.
3) Create a fishing decision-support system to assist fishers in optimizing their operations while ensuring the sustainable extraction of marine biological resources.
4) Improve stakeholders’ understanding and acceptance of a digital fisheries monitoring and control system.
5) Formulate strategic recommendations for the implementation of the innovative solutions developed and tested within OptiFish.
To achieve these objectives, the project will review a broad range of promising technologies and further develop them to meet the specific needs of European fisheries. OptiFish integrates tools such as genetics, electronic monitoring (EM) cameras, robotics, hyperspectral and multispectral imaging, and advanced monitoring and reporting systems. Together, these technologies will improve data acquisition and species identification for catch and bycatch composition, support real-time integration of sensors and monitoring systems to detect illegal fishing practices, and safeguard against system tampering. In addition, they will contribute to assessing fish health and product quality.
A series of five pilot studies will test and validate the project’s onboard technologies and system architectures across different types of fisheries and sea basins, using vessels with diverse catch handling facilities (CHF). These pilots have been carefully selected to represent a variety of fishing methods and onboard sorting arrangements, each posing distinct technical and operational challenges. By covering a broad geographical area, the pilots will also support the development of automated species recognition for commercial, non-commercial, and protected, endangered, and threatened species across Europe. Because it is important to inlude the views and opinions of different stakeholders regarding the development and deployment of new technologies, workshops and interviews are being organised throughout the project's duration.
