Automated estimate of fish abundance through the autonomous imaging device GUARD1

Abstract

Many technologies have been developed for monitoring the ocean interior. Among them the monitoring approaches based on imaging devices are capable to disclose important data on species behaviour and spatio-temporal variations of richness and evenness. In this context, the Argo programme (http://doi.org/10.17882/42182) is a valuable instrument for monitoring the deep sea at global scale in space and time. Argo floats equipped with imaging devices are candidate to become a new monitoring tool for studying macro- and mega-fauna in large areas and for extended time periods, potentially providing monitoring results never attained before. This work summarises the results obtained on the automated fish recognition task performed on the images acquired by the GUARD1 imaging device1This paper is an extended version of the conference paper, Marini et al., An Autonomous Imaging System for Argo Floats, IMEKO International Conference on Metrology for The Sea, Naples-Italy, October 11–13.1.