We design, build and supply cabled underwater fish and wildlife monitoring systems that are ideal for monitoring fishways (for example see Node 10) and any other artificial or natural underwater habitat. These units are self-cleaning and designed for long-term, semi-permanent or permanent installation in freshwater and marine environments. Typical hardware and software configurations consist of 1- 4  live underwater streaming video camera/sensor pack systems that automatically filter, collect and transfer novel and interesting fish activity for outreach, education and research.  Our systems have the following general features:
 

• 30+ metre (>100 feet)  waterproof conduit and connectors for shallow or deep installation

• 580 lines color high-resolution video (1/3 SONY Super HAD CCD sensor) with infrared illumination at night (48 infrared LEDs)

• Biological data are algorithmically filtered and analyzed

• Video and all sensor data continuously uploaded live to the internet and to our central BRAVO computers for secondary biological analysis including species identification, fish counts, abundance estimates,  behavioral trend analysis, inter-annual ecological relationships, thermal shifts in activity, responses to effluent, phenological trends, spawning and other ecologically significant activities

• System can detect and log signals from electronically-tagged fish (148 - 152 MHz) using an external radio receiver and can receive and transmit sound from each node

• Water and air temperature stored every 30 seconds and continuously uploaded

• Low maintenance self cleaning glass lens with variable duty-cycles depending on water conditions and nutrient levels

These fish monitoring systems use two levels of post-processing to filter and analyze data.  Level one processing occurs on-site using proprietary fish detection algorithms.  Secondary processing is cloud-based and takes place when the system automatically sends pre-processed video data to our central computers.  These machines run sophisticated AI algorithms that identify fish species, count and measure fish abundance and return video highlights and data summaries to our clients.  Archival video is automatically posted to the web and hosted by Biotactic.com (ARCHIVES here).

Fish monitoring systems operate automatically using a DSL internet connection, AC/DC power and secure ventilated compartments.   Applications include scientific research, agency-based fish and wildlife monitoring, marine biological applications, aquaculture, underwater surveillance, education and basic fun.  Since 2005 our underwater fish monitoring network has been used to achieve long-term research objectives related to inter-annual variation in fish migration patterns, migration timing and habitat utilization on a global scale.

MOBILE UNDERWATER FISH AND FISH HABITAT MONITORING SYSTEM