Successful launch of Deep Vision in South Korea

Deep Vision has been on its first cruise with the new fisheries science research vessel “Tamgu 23” in South Korea, owned by the National Institute of Fisheries Science (NIFS). – The biggest change is eco-friendly research that does not catch fish when operating trawling equipment, says research scientist Dr. Hyungbeen Lee.

“Tamgu 23” is equipped with state of the art scientific instruments, including scientific echosounder (EK80, ME70, SC90), trawl monitoring system, and MOCNESS. The Deep Vision system is the first of its kind in Korea – and the third in the world – to be employed by the forward-thinking institute. Dr. Lee describes his experience from the first cruise:

– We attached the Deep Vision during the six times operation of the mid-water trawl and fish caught by operating depth were filmed. Small fish under 10 cm were also photographed, enabling the identification of fish species, and the technique of measuring fish length by compensating the distance using two cameras was also impressive.

More sustainable sampling

Dr. Lee specialises in fisheries acoustic and researches temporal and spatial distribution of biomass of major pelagic fish species in Korea. With the help of Deep Vision, he is hoping that more of his research can be done without catching the fish:

– With Deep Vision, it is possible to identify and distribute fish species that pass through trawl without catching the fish. Although we are still fishing with the cod-end closed, and comparing the actual captured data with those from Deep Vision, we hope to proceed without catching fish in the future.

Acoustic integration

The system delivered to NIFS includes an acoustic link for sending statistical information from the Deep Vision underwater unit to the vessel, as well a sorting mechanism that makes it possible to sort the catch for biological samples and let the rest swim back into the sea.

Dr. Lee is still working to see how the system can best support his work and is hoping to integrate the efficiency of both acoustic and image-based method in his research. The Institute of Marine Research (IMR) in Norway already import images from Deep Vision into their acoustic software to confirm acoustic data where these are ambiguous.

– Also, it seems like a new attempt to fish for the necessary depth of water using the Deep Vision automatic selection mechanism, says Dr. Lee.

Challenging commission

Launching a new system on the other side of the world in a year of lockdown and travel restrictions was no mean feat. However, NIFS was determined to get the system operational on their first cruise despite the global challenges.

Scantrol Deep Vision’s engineer, Eirik Svoren Osborg, was one of the few engineers of the Scantrol group to leave the country after the lockdown in March of last year. He describes his experience:

– The commissioning in South Korea was certainly not what I expected when I first heard that I was going there. It was a very different travel experience, from wearing a mask to spending time in a quarantine hotel and submitting daily reports about my health condition via an app.