A group of technology innovators who all place the focus strongly on developing sustainable fisheries have come together by signing an MOU to develop a real-time catch sensing and release system for commercial fisheries.
CatchCam Technologies is the UK-based company behind the CatchCam underwater camera system that has made possible an affordable and effective gear-mounted system that enables fishing gear performance to be monitored. New Zealand companies Snap Core and Precision Seafood Harvesting have been prominent in harnessing technology designed to improve the environmental footfall of fisheries, including the FloMo codend, designed and trialled by Precision Seafood Harvesting.
Now the aim with this collaboration is to develop real-time catch sensing and release for commercial fisheries, seeking to combine their strengths in underwater monitoring, AI integration, and advanced harvesting systems to create a tool that can detect and respond to the accidental capture of protected species — all before the gear even surfaces.
‘No single company can solve these challenges alone’ said CatchCam Technologies co-founder Tom Rossiter.
‘This agreement will put practical tools into the hands of skippers and scientists — gear that works with the ocean, not against it.’
The agreement focuses on the development of catch sensing capable of detecting endangered, threatened, or protected (ETP) species, such as dolphins or seals, analysing species composition, size and catch volume using on-board artificial intelligence and able to activate a release-at-depth mechanism to free unwanted catch before hauling. To this list is added the essential requirement of being able to transmit real-time data direct to the skipper’s control position in the wheelhouse.
‘This partnership is about creating tools that help manage marine resources more effectively, now and into the future,’ commented André Pinkert, general manager commercial of Precision Seafood Harvesting.
For fisheries scientists and managers, the technology aims provide live, previously unseen ecological data from hard-to-monitor areas. For regulators and funding organisations, this collaboration represents a high-impact step toward scalable, measurable sustainability.
‘Snap Core systems give us the agility we need to make this solution responsive in real-time,’ said Chris Rodley, CEO of Snap Core.
‘We’re excited to see this collaboration extend and evolve.”’
