Fishing hardware company Marco, which is reponsible for suppling a large proportion of winches and gear handling systems for the world’s tuna fleet, has teamed up with Hyarks, a specialist in autonomous marine craft, to develop an innovative unmanned tuna spotting system.
Marco, based in Spain and with a customer base around the world, and Hyarks, headquartered in Taiwan and with its expertise largely in the wind energy sector, aim to deliver the first tuna-spotting TF-100 to a customer in the second quarter of 2026.
TF stands for Tuna Finder – and the aim is for the TF-100 to replace the helicopters and manned fast surface craft currently used to locate tuna. Supplementing conventional tuna location strategies, it partners with a high-performance drone equipped with ultra-high-resolution imaging systems to deliver a live feed to the wheelhouse – doing away with the high costs of operating helicopters from tuna vessels.
The TF-100 itself is designed for a service speed exceeding 20 knots, with an endurance of more than 600 nautical miles. It comes with a sonar and an advanced echo sounder and capability to stream live position data to the wheelhouse, plus data relating to the size of a mark and biomass information.
All this is intended to enable fishing masters to make better informed decisions, enabling smarter routing and searching, and consequently lower fuel costs and a better environmental footprint, streamlining fishing operations to keep by-catches to a minimum.
‘Thanks to the TF-100, fishing operators can significantly lower their carbon footprint by eliminating fuel-intensive aerial and fast-boat scouting, while enhancing operational efficiency, crew safety, and environmental responsibility,’ representatives of Hyarks and Marco predict.
The TF-100 is being developed to have manual, semi-automatic, and fully autonomous operating modes, and to slot seamlessly into a range of operational needs without requiring specialised training.
‘Its robust and modular design is built to withstand the toughest marine conditions and includes redundant systems that ensure uninterrupted operation, even in the most demanding scenarios,’ Hyarks and Marco state.
