Archipelago and Ai.Fish to Partner On the Advancement Of Artificial Intelligence In Fisheries Monitoring

VICTORIA, BC and KAILUA, HI July 20, 2021

Archipelago, a global provider of marine resource management products and services and Ai.Fish, a software startup developing artificial intelligence tools for marine conservation and ocean science, have announced a formal partnership to focus on the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) within electronic monitoring (EM) in commercial fisheries.

“In recent years, EM has grown slowly with a key challenge being the large volumes of data being captured during a fishing trip and the high cost that comes with analysing that data,” said Archipelago President and CEO, Gord Snell. “By partnering with Ai.Fish, we believe we can harness their experience within AI and our knowledge of large, operational EM programs to utilize AI and greatly reduce the costs associated with data analysis. This will reduce the overall cost of EM programs and lead to broader adoption of the technology worldwide.”

“Archipelago brings a wealth of knowledge to the table surrounding EM programs and with our team’s technical knowledge on deploying AI solutions, we are confident that together we will be able to move the AI needle very quickly in commercial fisheries,” stated Jimmy Freese, CEO of Ai.Fish. “We have witnessed an explosion of interest in fisheries AI in the last 3 years and a number of excellent pilot projects that have been funded through government agencies and NGOs. Through this partnership, we want to expand on these pilots and showcase the benefits and efficiencies that AI can bring to operational programs with a large volume of participating vessels.”

Archipelago pioneered EM in the late 1990’s and have continued to be a global leader in the advancement of the technology for more than 20 years. They currently support 500+ vessels carrying their EM products. Through their data review software, EM Interpret (EMI), clients review more EM fisheries data each year than any other software tool in the world. In 2017, Archipelago partnered with Marine Instruments in Spain to develop and deliver the next-generation of EM hardware solutions and together they continue to work towards the advancement of the EM Ecosystem through existing and future clients.

Ai.Fish is a software startup aiming to harness the latest artificial intelligence and machine learning research to address problems in marine sustainability and conservation. In 2020, with support from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Ai.Fish developed machine learning and computer vision algorithms for analyzing EM video, demonstrating the efficacy of AI technology in streamlining the EM review process through initial user trials in Hawaii. This partnership will enable them to deploy and test their AI processing at scale with feedback from users in a broad range of fisheries.

In an effort to advance the utilization of AI within fisheries, Archipelago will continue to support other AI advancement efforts throughout the industry such as The Nature Conservancy’s Fishnet initiative (fishnet.ai).

Visit www.archipelago.ca or ai.fish for more information or contact Archipelago at info@archipelago.ca or AI.fish at contact@ai.fish