BOSTON—New England's already strapped fishing fleet has a major new expense bearing down on it — paying for human monitors to track the fish that are hauled on deck or tossed over. That is, unless researchers can figure out how to replace those humans with cheaper electronic eyes.
A federally funded pilot project is testing a system at sea that could record the catch, and even figure out what it weighs, relying largely on closed-circuit cameras on board.
The system wouldn't completely replace the flesh-and-blood observers fishermen are periodically required to take to sea. But a primary aim is to reduce the need for them and save fishermen money, said Nichole Rossi, the project's lead.
Some fishermen are skeptical a camera system can be accurate or less expensive than a person on board. Others don't like the observer program at all, considering it intrusive and a sign of how little regulators trust them.
Read the complete Associated Press story by Jay Lindsay in the Boston Globe