Fish Box Counting on Trawlers: 99.9% Accuracy With No Internet at Sea
AI-powered box counting on five vessels: fully offline, with a daily production report from every trawler
Summary
Client. A fishing company that harvests fish and produces fresh-frozen seafood in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Task. Set up automated counting of boxes of finished seafood on board, at sea.
Result. CamContador video counters run on five vessels with 99.9% counting accuracy. Every day, head office receives a report showing how many boxes of finished product each trawler has produced.
Situation
The company catches fish and produces fresh-frozen seafood directly on board. Every vessel has its own processing plant: the fish is dressed, deep-frozen within a few hours of the catch, and packed. The finished boxes travel along a conveyor line towards the refrigerated hold, where they are stored until offloading.
Fishing vessels are held to strict product accounting standards. Catch volumes are governed by quotas, so any gap between reported and actual output creates additional risk for the company during inspections.
Management needs to see how much product is actually being made on the vessels. Yet trawlers spend weeks in the open ocean, far from shore, and the company’s office is thousands of kilometres from the fishing grounds.
Before the video counter was introduced, the number of packed boxes was not recorded automatically. The only way to count them was manually, by eye.
Challenge
Install a video counter that counts boxes of finished seafood on the conveyor on board. Counting had to run in the open ocean, where connectivity is unreliable, and must not depend on having an internet connection.
Solution
The trawler was preparing to leave for the fishing grounds, which left only a few days to get the video counter running. While a vessel is in port, there is a link to shore, parts and equipment are easy to source, and anything missing can be bought or reconfigured quickly. Once the vessel is at sea, that option is gone.
Installing a Video Counter on a Fishing Trawler
The client’s technician purchased a camera and a mini PC that met our hardware requirements. The camera was aimed at the section of the conveyor where boxes of frozen fish are clearly visible.
We selected the camera angle together with the client. After the first test, the camera was repositioned to make the boxes on the belt easier to count.
We stayed in touch throughout and helped resolve technical questions as the work progressed. Buying and installing the equipment took two days.
AI Box Counter on the Vessel’s Conveyor Line
The client’s technician started the conveyor on the trawler and boxes of fish began passing in front of the camera. We recorded the video and manually labelled every box in it. That data was used to train the video counter for this specific camera angle and for the lighting in the processing plant.
The working algorithm was installed on the client’s computer and counting began. From that point on, CamContador identifies product on the conveyor and counts it on its own, with no human involvement.
Configuring and launching the counter took two days — the same schedule as in our bag counting project on a conveyor line, where the products are also a single type.
Offline Counting Without an Internet Connection
Most of our clients choose an annual licence. Before it starts work, the video counter validates that licence over the internet, and without the check it will not begin counting.
At sea, a connection is not always available. For this project we therefore issued a perpetual offline licence — one of the licence types listed on our pricing page. It never contacts the server and runs entirely on its own.
The offline licence does come with one limitation: it is tied to specific hardware — the graphics card, the motherboard, and the processor. If any of these components is replaced, the licence has to be activated again.
The video counter now works regardless of internet access and regardless of where the vessel is fishing, whether in the Atlantic or the Pacific.
Daily Production Reports from Ship to Head Office
CamContador can compile reports for any period: a shift, a day, or a week. The data can be pushed to ERP or accounting software, exported to Excel, or delivered as a separate file.
The client set up a daily email report covering the previous 24 hours. It usually reaches the responsible employee at the office by 9 a.m. and shows how many boxes the video counter recorded during each shift. During one night shift, for example, the system logged 528 boxes over nine hours of work.
A report is one way to use the data. It can also drive equipment in real time: in an egg counting project the counter sends figures every ten seconds and the conveyor speed adjusts to them.
Rolling Out the Box Counter Across Four More Trawlers
After several weeks of testing on the first vessel, the client decided to deploy the system on four more ships.
The trawlers left for their voyages at different times, so equipment was purchased and installed for each of them in turn.
Filming conditions varied from vessel to vessel: the camera angle, the lighting, and the surroundings of the conveyor were all different. The video counter was therefore retrained for the specific conditions on each trawler.
Retraining is routine work. In a bread counting and recognition project the network was retrained a dozen times to tell 14 types of loaf apart; here the boxes are identical, so one round per vessel was enough.
Configuring and launching counting on all four vessels took about a month.
Results
The number of boxes of finished product made on the vessels used to go unrecorded. The video counter now runs on five trawlers and counts product with 99.9% accuracy. Counting runs locally on each ship and does not depend on the internet, and the client’s management receives a daily report on how much product each trawler has produced.
The accuracy of box counting is 99.9%.
Launch time. Two days on the first vessel. Installing, configuring, and launching the system on the remaining four trawlers took about a month.
Team. CamContador had one engineer working on the project. On the client’s side, a manager at head office coordinated the work, and each vessel had its own technician on board who installed the equipment and helped configure the system.
| Parameter | Detail |
|---|---|
| Accuracy Rate | 99.9% |
| Vessels in Operation | 5 trawlers |
| Connectivity | Fully offline, perpetual licence |
| Hardware Requirement | IP camera + mini PC |
| Integration | ERP / accounting software sync, Excel, scheduled email reports |
| Object Types | Boxes of fresh-frozen seafood on a conveyor |
| Launch Time | 2 days on the first vessel, about a month for the remaining four |
Need to count products on a line where the internet connection is unreliable? See how counting works in other industries or get a free pilot assessment for your production line.