Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We are at Vigo fishing harbour,
the most important fishing harbour in Europe for human consumption,
and one of the most important harbours in the whole world.
About 90,000 tonnes of fresh fish are unloaded here every year,
400 tonnes a day.
Innovation is absolutely a must, in both quality and environmental matters.
This means big challenges, in matters like fish discards.
The FAROS project tries to find commercial use
for species that currently aren't profitable.
We take into account not only the species being exploited,
but also all those related to be properly exploited,
therefore discards are of great importance in fishing management.
FAROS project intends to minimise all costs related
to a zero discards policy implementation.
We need to quantify how much biomass is produced and where,
that is, where those discards come from.
What for? To know how much it costs to bring to land
and what kind of biomass we have.
Yet this process is not an easy task,
because we didn't know what species we had.
How can you assess what you don't know you have?
We studied what species were captured,
and of all of them, which ones were thrown back into the sea.
We selected those species captured in high amount
that could be profitable and assessed to be sold.
Somehow, a starting point to an efficient management.
What we used is a special camera with artificial vision techniques
that identifies the amount and species of discards,
then that information is sent to CESGA Computational Centre,
where that information is centralised,
so we can calculate amounts of subproducts,
and chances of assessment.
We participate in FAROS Project, our task is dissemination and demonstration
of all the results we'll achieve
or we are achieving throughout the Project.
Facilitating the coordination between the Administration and research centres,
and all the agents in the fishing sector.
It's all about educating, pointing out these tools are helpful to the fishing sector,
it's a way to realistically implement this policy of no discards,
contributing to the sustainability of the fishing, which will bring back profit to the companies.