The Scottish Inshore Fisheries Integrated Data System (SIFIDS) Project –The European Maritime Fisheries Fund (EMFF) has awarded funding to develop an integrated system for the collection, collation, analysis and interrogation of data from the Scottish inshore fishing fleet. This project (SIFIDS) is being coordinated by the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology Scotland (MASTS) and SeaScope have been tasked with delivering four work packages (WPs) within the overall project. These are: –
- WP2 A and B – focus on the development of equipment that will allow the autonomous collection and processing of fisheries data from vessels fishing creels to target lobster and crab.
- WP2A: Focused on developing an On-board Central Data Collation System (OBCDCS) which will record temporal and spatial activity data and collate data from an array of other sensors being designed as part of WP2B. The system sends its data back to a shore reception system using 3G/4G/Wi-Fi/Satellite Internet on a scheduled basis with no user interaction required. The OBCDCS system is designed to have a low-power requirement (operating on 12v DC), a small footprint and flexible installation options, including a fully portable peli-case system.
- WP2B: Developments will include capturing catch data, effort data, environmental data and biological data. At present, the system has the capability to identify and record haul/shoot events for individually tagged strings of creels and the retrieval of the individual creels within those strings. Each event being spatially and temporally tagged by the overarching OBCDCS system. Current developments in the catch arena are targeted at providing individual level data (species, sex, size) for target species (Crab, Lobster, Velvet Crab) in both the retained and discarded elements of the catch.
- WP6 – is the development of a decision support tool in the form of a relational database that can be used by stakeholders (e.g. fishermen, marine planners, fisheries managers) when making decisions relating to the marine environment and activities.
- WP8A – is the provision of at-sea researcher services to collect information for WP8B and the other work packages. WP8B is primarily investigating the feasibility of using data from Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) to track vessel movements to infer fishing activity patterns.
