Workshop Goal:

The primary goal will be to identify and discuss the barriers/gaps/challenges in scaling up EM through as much discrete interaction as possible among the practitioners and providers in attendance.

Workshop Overview:

EM systems are at what many are calling the “minimum viable product” level yet the momentum for adopting EM across a broad spectrum of fisheries and uses is tangible and increasing. Progress is being made on scaling up early phase/pilot projects to full-blown EM Programs in many geographies & fisheries. There are several R&D efforts underway to make EM a more scalable tool for fisheries monitoring and compliance focusing on reducing the back-end burden (automating some aspects of the video review) and progress in data transmission and storage (targeted onboard video analysis/compression; sat transmission/cloud storage vs hard drive systems). However, many of these efforts have yet to trickle down to tangible on-the-water tools that are ready at a commercial scale. This workshop represents a unique opportunity to address and discuss these challenges with some of the leading experts in the field and practitioners faced with the challenges of development and implementation.

The facilitator(s) will provide a general overview of each workshop topic, including barriers to scale, and then have the invited experts provide a brief overview/perspective on addressing the challenges/barriers identified followed by a facilitated discussion/Q&A session. The goal of the facilitated discussion will be to have practitioners and policy experts provide direct input and feedback to the technology providers on the identified challenges. Invited technology experts include:

- Amanda Barney, EcoTrust Canada

- Jeff Douglas & Josh Wiersma, Integrated Monitoring

- Tomás Galán, Satlink

- Jacob Lowry, Flywire

- Howard McElderry, Archipelago

- Chris Rodley, SnapIT

Workshop Lead:

Craig Heberer, Deputy Director, Indo-Pacific Tuna Program, The Nature Conservancy

Part 1 Moderator:

Ben Woodward, CVision AI

Part 2 Moderator:

Craig Heberer, The Nature Conservancy