Oral Presentation Australian Society for Fish Biology & Australian Freshwater Sciences Society Conference 2026

From models to management: making artificial intelligence accessible through dashboards for scalable fish monitoring (145501)

Alison McNamara 1 , Rod Connolly 1 , Michael Sievers 1 , Diego Gloria 1 , Alyssa Marshell 2 , Maya Lovelock-Dodos 2 , Victoria Cole 3 , Vincent Raoult 1
  1. FishID, Griffith University, Southport, Queensland, Australia
  2. Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
  3. Port Stephens Fisheries Institute, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Port Stephens, New South Wales, Australia

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, particularly computer vision, are transforming the way fish and fisheries are monitored. However, uptake by government agencies, fisheries managers and monitoring practitioners is often constrained by the need for specialist expertise, software, and computing infrastructure. Interactive dashboards are practical tools that can help operationalise complex AI workflows in fisheries monitoring. We demonstrate the utility of our dashboards across three applications: determining fish counts and sizes to support stock assessments in Tasmania; generating fish counts and length data to evaluate restored oyster reefs in New South Wales; and producing sea cucumber counts in Queensland to support industry assessment and sustainable harvest management. Through these dashboards, users upload imagery, and apply trained models to generate outputs including counts, species ID and length data. Integrated review galleries allow users to validate and amend model outputs, retaining expert oversight while reducing reliance on traditional manual analysis. The dashboards can be adapted to different monitoring objectives and integrated into established fisheries monitoring programs. Together, these applications demonstrate how interactive dashboards can support the sustained operational use of computer vision, increasing processing capacity, improving analytical consistency and reducing the recurring costs of image-based monitoring.