REM technology to help full the landing obligation in European fisheries towards more sustainable fishing

Abstract

The main control measures used in EU fisheries are the use of logbooks, monitoring of vessel geographic positions and the inspections of the vessels at sea (patrol vessel surveillance) and at the ports (inspection of the landings). Many studies indicate that this traditional control measures are not effective within the current Landing Obligation rules. The Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) is currently considered as one of the best future alternatives for the control of fishing activity. In fact, many fleets have already incorporated this technology into their activity to respond to the requirements of regional fishing organizations and control authorities in many countries of the world. The aim of this work was to test the implementation of innovative technologies based on artificial vision devices for catch composition determination and data management technologies installed on board. A study case including onboard observer trials and an automatic device was carried out to characterize discards and record unwanted species occurrence in commercial vessels. The “iObserver system” was implemented to improve the quality and availability of data and consequently to deepen knowledge on the status of the fisheries resources. This technology is aimed to be able to identify and quantify the catch (targeted and discarded) without interfering with the activity of fishermen. Once the data (species and biomass estimation) is acquired by iObserver, information is pre-processed and transmitted to land (to management servers). This system will allow real-time decision making for the fishing activity in order to eventually perform a more selective fishing. Automatic estimates of discards by species allow to take real-time decisions, avoid areas/times with high discards rates and potentially to comply with landing obligation