Researchers use money-saving AI to accurately count fish stocks in the ocean

Wealthy countries spend millions every year in calculating fish stocks, with people physically having to go out in boats and estimate from there. File picture

Counting global fish stocks could be the latest use for the burgeoning world of artificial intelligence (AI), potentially saving millions of euro a year in research and assisting fishers in developing nations.

Researchers led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have developed an algorithm that was able to accurately count 85% of fish stocks — the number of fish living in a certain catchment — in a pilot region of the Western Indian Ocean.