OptiFish will strive to provide technological solutions that will simultaneously improve the sustainability of fisher’s operations, enhance control processes and strengthen society’s trust in their products. OptiFish will develop, test and recommend a set of innovative technologies and tools supported by artificial intelligence (AI) to provide the management, the fishing sector and the scientist with data on catch volumes, catch compositions and the fishing environment. The goal is to unlock the full potential of technologies such as electronic and genetic monitoring for automated species recognition based on AI and computer vision to reduce discards, unreported landings and unreported fishing activities, ultimately establishing a fisheries control and enforcement system fit for the digital age. The technologies are not enough alone, it is also critical to consider the combination of technologies and the integration of computer vision models, the wide range of data sources and their subsequent formats, while also addressing stakeholders needs and acceptance. This goal cannot be achieved by a single project, which is why the aim of OptiFish is to lay a solid foundation for full technological development from which other projects and initiatives can be built. The project will place a strong focus on species recognition in different fisheries equipped with distinctly different catch handling facilities and in different European sea basins. To ensure that these innovations are relevant to fisheries management, OptiFish has participation from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, and has received written support from the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA), the Basque, Danish and Belgian Fisheries authorities.

The Blue Growth of European fisheries is at risk due to over-exploitation, unforeseen changes in stock productivity, loss of markets for capture fisheries due to aquaculture, future trade agreements opening European markets to external fleets, and fluctuations in the price of oil and other business costs. All of these risks need to be considered when providing advice needed to sustainably maximize profits for the diverse array of fisheries operating in European waters and to help safeguard the benefits this sector provides to the social coherence of local, coastal communities. PANDORA aims to: 1. Create more realistic assessments and projections of changes in fisheries resources (30 stocks) by utilizing new biological knowledge (spatial patterns, environmental drivers, food-web interactions and density-dependence) including, for the first time, proprietary data sampled by pelagic fishers. 2. Advice on how to secure long-term sustainability of EU fish stocks (maximum sustainable/”pretty good” and economic yields) and elucidate tradeoffs between profitability and number of jobs in their (mixed demersal, mixed pelagic and single species) fisheries fleets. Provide recommendations on how to stabilize the long-term profitability of European fisheries. 3. Develop a public, internet-based resource tool box (PANDORAs Box of Tools), including assessment modelling and stock projections code, economic models, and region- and species-specific decision support tools; increase ownership and contribution opportunities of the industry to the fish stock assessment process through involvement in data sampling and training in data collection, processing and ecosystem-based fisheries management. The project will create new knowledge (via industry-led collection, laboratory and field work, and theoretical simulations), new collaborative networks (industry, scientists and advisory bodies) and new mechanisms (training courses and management tools) to ensure relevance, utility and impact.

Blue-Action will provide fundamental and empirically-grounded, executable science that quantifies and explains the role of a changing Arctic in increasing predictive capability of weather and climate of the Northern Hemisphere.To achieve this Blue-Action will take a transdisciplinary approach, bridging scientific understanding within Arctic climate, weather and risk management research, with key stakeholder knowledge of the impacts of climatic weather extremes and hazardous events; leading to the co-design of better services.This bridge will build on innovative statistical and dynamical approaches to predict weather and climate extremes. In dialogue with users, Blue-Arctic will take stock in existing knowledge about cross-sectoral impacts and vulnerabilities with respect to the occurrence of these events when associated to weather and climate predictions. Modeling and prediction capabilities will be enhanced by targeting firstly, lower latitude oceanic and atmospheric drivers of regional Arctic changes and secondly, Arctic impacts on Northern Hemisphere climate and weather extremes. Coordinated multi-model experiments will be key to test new higher resolution model configurations, innovative methods to reduce forecast error, and advanced methods to improve uptake of new Earth observations assets are planned. Blue-Action thereby demonstrates how such an uptake may assist in creating better optimized observation system for various modelling applications. The improved robust and reliable forecasting can help meteorological and climate services to better deliver tailored predictions and advice, including sub-seasonal to seasonal time scales, will take Arctic climate prediction beyond seasons and to teleconnections over the Northern Hemisphere. Blue-Action will through its concerted efforts therefore contribute to the improvement of climate models to represent Arctic warming realistically and address its impact on regional and global atmospheric and oceanic circulation.