Soft-shell turtle farming, a growing aquaculture practice in East and Southeast Asia, involves a pond habitat and a sand-filled spawning area that serves as a nesting site for female turtles. Harvesting these eggs is a labor-intensive and time-consuming task, as farmers must excavate the entire spawning area to ensure all eggs are collected while avoiding damage to buried eggs. Additionally, turtles may inadvertently nest over existing sites, exposing previously buried eggs to a higher risk of damage or consumption by other turtles. Accurate identification of nest locations can significantly reduce farmers’ workload by eliminating unnecessary excavation, while early detection of exposed eggs allows for timely collection, minimizing egg loss, and improving productivity. To address these challenges, we present a real-time AI-based monitoring system to detect soft-shell turtle nesting behavior and exposed eggs. The system integrates YOLOv7 for detecting turtles and exposed eggs, object tracking to monitor turtle movements, and an LSTM-based spatio-temporal model to recognize nesting behaviors. YOLOv7 achieved an average precision (AP) of 98.9% for turtle detection and 88.8% for exposed egg detection, while the LSTM-based model demonstrated 95.73% accuracy and 98.64% recall for recognizing nesting activity. During the 2022 nesting season, spanning 245 days, the system identified 1,713 nests and saved 76.62% of the egg-harvesting efforts, as farmers no longer needed to excavate the entire spawning site. This efficient, non-invasive approach minimizes egg loss, optimizes farm management, and highlights the potential of precision livestock technologies to enhance productivity and sustainability in soft-shell turtle farming.
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