Monitoring Smolt Salmon Migration with Sonar
An innovative use of sonar imagery to monitor and analyze the migration patterns of smolt salmon as they journey from freshwater to the ocean
Freshwater ecosystems hold 41% of the world’s known fish species.1 Rivers are also roads: salmon and trout hatch in their gravel, travel down them to grow, and come back up them to spawn, and the nutrients they carry feed the forest along the banks.2
Under pressure
Freshwater vertebrate populations fell by 83% between 1970 and 2014, according to the Living Planet Index.1 The causes are well known: overexploitation, pollution, dams and altered flows, habitat destruction and invasive species.1
What we do
You cannot manage a river without knowing what swims in it. SalmonVision counts and classifies migrating salmon from cameras, sonar and drones, our smolt sonar work follows young salmon out to sea, and trout identification recognises individual westslope cutthroat trout in British Columbia’s Elk River.
Projects
Trout Identification
Non-invasive technology for monitoring trout populations using computer vision to accurately identify individual fish.
Wild Salmon Migration Monitoring
The project monitors wild salmon migration to ensure the number passing through meets state regulations, addressing threats from human activities like fisheries and dams.
Live demos
Smolt Sonar Monitoring
Detecting, tracking and counting juvenile salmon in ARIS sonar as they migrate downstream.
Trout Identification
Reading the spot patterns on trout to identify individual fish, a non-invasive way to monitor populations.
Wild Salmon Migration Monitoring
Classifying and counting wild salmon from underwater camera streams as they migrate back to spawn.
Tools
SalmonVision
Underwater cameras, sonar and drones combined with innovative AI technology to enable precise and automated salmon counting in rivers.
Blog posts
Tracking the Journey: How to Monitor Wild Salmon Migrations
An in-depth look at the systems developed and deployed to track the journey of wild salmon as they return to their natal streams.
Open to collaboration
Every project here was built hand in hand with conservation partners, and much of the code is open source. If our work fits a challenge you're facing, or you'd like to build something together, we'd love to hear from you.