Automated Monitoring of Bluefin Tuna Growth in Cages Using a Cohort-Based Approach

Abstract

In this article, the evolution of BFT (bluefin tuna) sizes in fattening cages is studied, for which it was necessary to perform exhaustive monitoring with stereoscopic cameras and an exhaustive analysis of the data using automatic procedures. Exploring the size evolution of BFT over a long period is an important step in inferring their growth patterns, which are essential for designing smart aquaculture and sustainable fishing, and even assessing their health status. An important objective of this work was to verify whether tuna in captivity, in addition to fattening, grow in length. To this end, our autonomous monitoring system, equipped with stereoscopic cameras, was installed from 28 July 2020 to 23 May 2021 in a fattening cage in the Mediterranean containing 724 free-swimming tuna. This system provides thousands of images that, grouped by time intervals, allow us to conduct our studies. An automatic procedure, already introduced in a previous work and capable of processing large volumes of data, is used to estimate the length and width of individuals in ventral stereoscopic images of fish, and the evolution over time is analysed for each biometric characteristic. However, verifying the evolution of length and width based only on means or medians of these measurements may be inconsistent and insufficiently accurate to support our study objectives, as individuals of different sizes and ages may grow at different rates. Therefore, a modal analysis (Bhattacharya’s method) was undertaken to identify the cohorts within the population. The results showed that each modal length surpassed the length of the next cohort and that there was accelerated growth in cages compared to the wild. In addition, we proved that using a length–width–weight relationship to estimate fish weight gives more accurate results than traditional length–weight relationships for fish fattened in cages.