New Zealand's fishing industry is under huge pressure to be more transparent with consumers.
One Napier fisherman has been working with NIWA to limit bycatch on his boat.
The project is reeling in global support to try put a stop to a worldwide problem.
After a successful day trawling for yellow belly flounder for Karl Warr, there's also what's called bycatch — some gurnard he didn't intend to catch.
The Napier fisherman is trying to change that.
"Trawling is fairly indiscriminate for want of a better word," he told 1 NEWS from his fishing vessel.
He's working with NIWA, with Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment funding, to develop a selective underwater system.
NIWA scientist Emma Jones puts it this way: "A real sort of brain on the trawl."
Cameras are attached to a trawling net with a gate, controlled from onboard.
As fish are caught, they can be seen and released if they're not a targeted species.
Jones said it has huge potential to stop catching endangered or hard to avoid species.
"It has the potential to allow really tailored fishing that’s tailored to what the market wants — almost catch to order."
Warr said it will also help fish survival rates.
"The key point we want to make there is, release them in the same habitat and depth that we found them in so they don’t go through trauma in the process of us sorting them out, aimed at giving them their best survival chances."
Just a prototype currently, Jones said the team's working with Washington University to create a complex AI (artificial intelligence) system.
"We are collecting video or imagery of fish so we can develop those algorithms into automatically identifying the species and then build a software that would make those decisions automatically — you can pre-programme it to say, keep all gurnard, release all terakihi for instance."
The problem with these projects is that they're expensive and take time.
Industry body Seafood New Zealand said it's constantly looking to fund new technology to improve fishing methods which reduce impact on the ocean.
Jones hopes to harness that support.
"We are very much hoping to engage more widely with the wider fishing industry and see how some of our concepts and ideas transfer across to different fishing methods."
Government-mandated cameras are to be installed on 300 inshore vessels over three years to monitor bycatch.
Karl sees net cameras as another step further.
"If you are only bringing back to the boat the things you set out to bring back to the boat then absolutely it’s definitely going to be a plus."
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