As part of the MarineGuardian project, our partner Sjókovin has been actively engaging with the Faroese public to share knowledge about marine research, innovation, and EU-funded collaboration.
How were local communities engaged in 2025?
First, in March 2025, following the acceptance of the MarineGuardian project, Sjókovin celebrated its 5th anniversary with a public conference that brought together researchers, stakeholders, and the wider community. During the event, all newly approved Horizon Europe projects (MeCCAM, OCCAM), including MarineGuardian, were presented to an audience of around 100 participants, highlighting the role of research and innovation for sustainable marine futures.
Outreach continued throughout autumn 2025, when Sjókovin hosted visits for students. Twice, on October 8th and November 13th, local students had the opportunity to visit the cluster.
During those visits, participants were introduced to Sjókovin’s EU projects, with MarineGuardian featured as part of the programme. In total, around 60 participants took part in these sessions, fostering dialogue with the next generation of marine professionals.
To end the year, at Jobmatch 2025 in december, Sjókovin met with a wide range of people interested in learning more about research careers and ongoing innovation projects. With more than 500 participants attending the event, Jobmatch provided an important opportunity to showcase MarineGuardian to a broader audience.
What are the next milestones for 2026 ?
In August 2026, Faroe Islands will host the international institute of fisheries Economics and trade conference (IIFET 2026), focusing on global dialogue for sustainable fisheries and aquaculture.
MarineGuardian has been invited to contribute to the special host session “Innovation to Reduce Climate Change Impacts to and from Fisheries”, further strengthening the project’s international visibility and local relevance.
Abstract submissions for the conference are open until 15th of February 2026 – try to secure your spot !
Through all these activities, Sjókovin plays a key role in connecting MarineGuardian with communities, students, and stakeholders in the Faroe Islands ensuring that research outcomes are shared, discussed, and rooted in local contexts.
Last summer, the MarineGuardian project took a major step forward during a real-world research campaign at sea — combining artificial intelligence, marine science, and fisheries sustainability.
From 6 to 17 September, onboard the research vessel Miguel Oliver (a ship belonging to the General Secretariat for Fisheries of the Government of Spain) scientists and engineers from CSIC worked in the Cantabrian Northwest national fishing grounds (ICES divisions 8c and 9a), carrying out bottom-trawl operations under real fishing conditions with different selective gears.
Research vessel Miguel Oliver – belonging to the General Secretariat for Fisheries of the Government of Spain
During the campaign, the scientists deployed iObserver 2.0, an electronic observer system installed over the conveyor belt in the fishing sorting area which automatically takes pictures during fish separation. Each picture is analysed using an Deep Learning (DL) image recognition model and, for each individual:
Identifies the species.
Estimates fish length and weight.
It then combines the DL output of all pictures to generate a catch report for the entire haul.
iObserver – electronic observer system set over conveyor belt on fishing vessels – advanced by CSIC
During the survey, we began developing BenthoSearcher 2.0, an advanced AI and computer vision tool, built based on the iObserver 2.0 hardware and designed to automatically detect and identify benthic species living on the seafloor. It will quantify the presence of PETS and VMEs even in complex fishing environments. When deployed on commercial vessels, the system will deliver near real-time maps that support more sustainable fishing, help avoid unwanted catches, and enhance marine habitat cartography.
Building the foundations for AI
A key objective of this trial was data collection and starting to generate a new dataset of benthic invertebrates images (by using the iObserver 2.0) that serve as indicators of VMEs (Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems) and PETS (Protected, Endangered, and Threatened Species), which will later be used to train and validate new AI algorithms to identify (and quantify) these species.
Hundreds of benthic invertebrates were carefully used for training of the AI by:
Identifying them by experts,
measuring and weighing them,
photographing them from multiple angles and positions, to create a high-quality image dataset for training future AI models by maximising the visual variety of images.
Both individual specimens pictures and multiple specimens, with and without overlap were taken to enhance the algorithm robustness and recognition accuracy. In total, more than 1,700 training images were collected, covering emblematic species such as corals, sea pens and other sensitive benthic invertebrates.
Leptometra celtica – Source: British Marine Life Pictures – Copyright: Jason Gregory
Lophelia Pertusa – Source: Publication DOI: 10.13140/2.1.3230.6247 – Copyright: Rebecca E. Ross
Why does this matters ?
By enabling near real-time identification of sensitive marine habitats and species during fishing operations, tools like BenthoSearcher 2.0 can:
support more sustainable fishing practices,
help avoid unwanted catches,
strengthen the protection of vulnerable ecosystems.
What’s next ?
The data collected during this campaign will now be used to train and validate new AI algorithms to identify (and quantify) these species which will serve as the base for the BenthoSearcher 2.0.
At the Healthy Seas and Waters by 2030 conference in Trondheim, Norway on December 4th 2025, policymakers, researchers, and industry partners gathered to discuss the actions needed to secure healthy marine ecosystems for the future. One theme cut clearly across the conference program: Europe needs innovative, scalable solutions across all ocean industries that can support both productive bioeconomic activities while also ensuring sustainable ocean biodiversity.
In the session “Climate-Neutral Blue Economy”, SINTEF Ocean Chief Scientist Rachel Haug Fossbakk presented the MarineGuardian project, and how its 21-partner consortium is addressing exactly these challenge through more than 40 targeted innovations aimed at reducing environmental impacts, improving data access, and strengthening long-term sustainability in the fisheries sector in the Arctic/Atlantic sea basins.
Here are five key insights from the conference — and how MarineGuardian is contributing to the transition.
1. The urgency is real — and solutions must be implemented at scale
Europe’s coastal ecosystems are under increasing pressure. Today, 79% of coastal seabed habitats are affected by bottom-trawling, 38% of global fish stocks are overfished, and over one million protected or vulnerable species are taken as bycatch each year.
MarineGuardian’s work responds directly to this reality. By combining technology, data, and operational strategies, the project aims to reduce bycatch, protect sensitive habitats, and improve efficiency in fisheries — helping move the sector toward climate neutrality and ecological resilience.
2. MarineGuardian supports both global and the EUs biodiversity and sustainability commitments
The project aligns closely with several targets defined in the EU Nature Restoration agenda and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, including the 30×30 goal of 30% protection of land and sea by 2030, but also ensuring continued sustainable use of marine resources, and the adoption of nature-positive industry practices.
MarineGuardian contributes by developing:
Selective and low-impact fishing solutions;
Real-time monitoring and reporting systems;
AI-driven decision support tools; and
Guidelines and operational strategies to integrate new technologies into real fishing operations
Together, these innovations help bridge the gap between policy ambitions and practical implementation, which is also critical when high level ambitions at global arenas need to be translated to local realities.
3. Co-development with users is essential — and central to the MarineGuardian project
A key message from the presentation by Dr. Fossbakk, who is also leader of WP1 in MarineGuardian on Multi-level governance and stakeholder co-production of knowledge was that technology uptake depends on understanding real operational needs with industry and technology partners and end users – across different geographical locations and fisheries. MarineGuardian therefore works closely with:
fishers and vessel operators
technology and gear developers
managers and policymakers and
scientific experts and training providers
The project’s six case studies – spread across European fisheries along the Arctic/Atlantic sea absin, as well as a case in Canada – ensure that solutions are tested under diverse environmental, regulatory, and operational conditions. This approach strengthens both relevance and scalability of the innovations developed in the project.
4. Backcasting helps identify what must change for innovations to succeed
MarineGuardian uses a forward-looking approach known as backcasting. When using this method, we ask stakeholders to envision themselves in a future 2040 scenario where monitoring systems, AI tools, and advanced sensors are standard and accepted equipment across the fishing fleet in all areas. Stakeholdres are then asked to consider how we reached this future scenario, and identify the steps that would have needed to have been taken to make that scenario achievable.
In a first overarching workshop, with the transdisciplinary consortium of the MarineGuardian project as stakeholders, results highlighted the importance this group placed on the need for the following aspects to be achieved for the successful and effective implementation of the 40+ innovations of the project, namely:
supportive regulatory frameworks
market and value-chain incentives
technological readiness and affordability of innovations
flexible access to fishing grounds and
strong engagement from industry stakeholders
By working backwards, the MarineGuardian project participants – representing industry, technology, regulatory agencies and scientists – emphasized what barriers must be addressed to enable real-world adoption. This methodology will in the next six month also be used in all six case areas – ensuring cross-case methodological comparability.
5. CatchScanner illustrates how research–industry collaboration accelerates progress
The presentation also featured an example of one of these innovations, namely the CatchScanner developed by Melbu Systems, with research collaborations with SINTEF Ocean. This is an example of how innovations emerges when industry experience and research expertise converge, and industry become parts of research projects.
Using 3D imaging and artificial intelligence, the CatchScanner can identify species and estimate size and weight in real time of fish that are brought on board the fishing vessel, offering a more reliable, cost-effective solution for onboard catch registration. In the future, once widely implemented, this technology will support compliance by design, improve data quality, and help fishers reduce unwanted catch of juvenile or vulnerable species – while also making fishing operations more effective and less uncertain in terms of weight estimation and possible fines. Melbu Systems’ rapid development in northern Norway furthermore also demonstrates how technological innovation can also create local economic value and support resilient coastal communities.
Looking ahead
A sustainable fisheries sector that contributes to food security, supports coastal communities, and meets global and regional biodiversity and climate objectives is within reach — but only if we equip users with the right tools and the right knowledge at the right time. MarineGuardian’s 40+ innovations are designed to make this transformation operational, by providing the technologies, data systems, and governance insights needed for more selective, transparent, and environmentally responsible fisheries.
This aligns directly with the ambitions of the EU Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters”, which calls for measurable reductions in pollution, regeneration of marine and freshwater ecosystems, and a sustainable, carbon-neutral blue economy. The conference made one thing clear: the solutions are emerging, the momentum is building, and MarineGuardian stands as a concrete pathway for turning Mission Ocean goals into real change in the Arctic and Atlantic sea basins.
At the ICES – MISSION ATLANTIC Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) Symposium on 17-18 November 2025, the Marine Guardian WP5 Lead on Impact Maximisation, Caecilia Managò (ICES), represented the project with a poster showcasing the Key Exploitable Results – scalable fishing gear solutions – to reduce bycatch and supporting sustainable and economically viable fisheries in the Atlantic and Arctic basins.
Presentations on the Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) research findings illustrated in Sanky diagrams how different sectors generate pressures and how these affect ecological components. Across the Atlantic, from South Africa to Trinidade Island (Brazil) and at basin scale, bycatch was identified as a major pressure on marine ecosystems.
At the same time, advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) on Bycatch of endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species highlights that bycatch mitigation is complex and requires tailored combinations of alternative gears, spatial measures (e.g. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)), and temporal measures such as seasonal closures).
The Marine Guardian project addresses this challenge by bringing forward innovative fishing gear designed to reduce incidental catches, protect sensitive species and habitats, and support economically viable fisheries. Among these solutions, devices like Smartrawl enable fishers to safely release non-target species before harm occurs, demonstrating how technology can translate scientific insights into practical, real-world results (Here is the overview of the MarineGuardian solutions).
In relation to MPAs, MarineGuardian collaborated with the BioProtect Project at the Symposium, playing a role-game facilitated by Sophie Jensen (Matís, BioProtect Coordinator). The game simulates stakeholder perspectives in MPA management, exploring trade-offs between conservation, fisheries, and community needs, showing how gear innovation, spatial planning, and temporal measures need to be addressed in an integrated way, to achieve effective and sustainable Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management.
Based on the research findings shown at the Symposium, the science-based advice by ICES, MarineGuardian developments for innovative fishing gear and BioProtect stakeholder perspectives, we can co-deliver measurable impact: reducing bycatch, protecting sensitive habitats, and supporting sustainable livelihoods in fisheries—critical steps toward the EU Mission ‘Restore our Ocean and Waters’ Objectives.
Many fisheries are well managed under an ecosystem-based, precautionary approach, and we have seen stocks and ecosystems successfully rebuilt through good management, yet important challenges still remain.
In Europe, Bottom trawling has damaged 79% of coastal seabed, and 25% of coastal area have lost vital habitats. Across the oceans, 38% of fish stocks are overfished. Over a million of Protected, Endangered and Threatened species are caught per year. This needs to change – but how?
Watch the video and see how MarineGuardian will address these challenges.
This summer, our partner Heriot-Watt University did trials to test the latest developments of Smartrawl, an innovative solution advanced in MarineGuardian. Smartrawl is tackling one the largest challenge faced in trawling: the bycatch of species and their high risk of mortality.
Smartrawl is an in-water sorting device which is retrofitted inside the net of a commercial fishing trawler. The system has three components:
a stereo camera, taking images of animals in the trawl
a computer, with artificial intelligence to detect, identify and size animals
and a gate, controlled by the computer to either catch or release animals controlled by a latch.
Smartrawl is designed with, and for, UK fishers, and their vessels to reduce discards and bycatch. The entire system needs no cables from the vessel and can be pre-programmed dependent on the fishers’ desired catch. Fisheries Innovation & Sustainability is the main partner behind the financing of the new gate for Smartrawl which was designed by Almond Engineering Limited. Thanks to them this innovative solution is reaching a new milestone in tackling bycatch from trawling.
In the last month they have manufactured a new, improved and more robust gate. At the beginning of September, they tested it in the Firth of Forth (just outside Edinburgh), evaluating if the gate would react well at being towed behind a small vessel. The tested performed showed the gate responded well, performing and rotating smoothly.
Innovation doesn’t come without challenges — and that’s exactly why we test!
The FishScanner, developed by Star-Oddi in collaboration with Hafrannsóknastofnun – Marine & Freshwater Research Institute, is being tested. Designed in two versions – a scientific model with stereo cameras for detailed data collection, and a commercial model built to be compact and non-intrusive – the FishScanner is set to transform how we monitor fish stocks.
During the most recent capelin survey between Iceland and Greenland, the scientific FishScanner was installed in the survey trawl. As fish passed through, the device counted them and measured their length in real time, allowing weight estimates of fish entering the trawl.
During this trial on board Árni Friðriksson (one of the research vessels from MFRI), the FishScanner was tested with a higher frame rate than before, resulting in darker pictures due to fewer photons per frame at the same light intensity.
But when we worked with capelin, we needed red light because their behavioural reaction to light is strong. However, everything else worked smoothly.
These are valuable lessons that will directly improve the device with stronger light, but still red.
The next trial is scheduled for January – stay tuned as we continue to refine this technology and push boundaries in fisheries research.
The month started with the second scientific committee meeting where the partners had the opportunity to meet in person and discussed the following steps to take on this exciting journey !
At the same time was held the forum about Energy transition in Fisheries, organised by the Nordic Council of Ministers where Matís had a keynote on fleet policy and fisheries management where MarineGuardian was introduced.
Straight after, the fisheries conference, Sjávarútvegsráðstefnan was organised in Harpa, Reykjavik, and where multiple MarineGuardian partners shared interesting insights about the project.
Photo: Katrín Hulda Gunnarsdóttir
Þorsteinn Ágústsson from Trackwell had a presentation about the importance of Artificial Intelligence in the fisheries industry and how getting more data allows better decisions, while Pamela Woods from Hafrannsóknastofnun a chaired the session from Fisheries Management Systems of Coastal States.
Sveinn Margeirsson from BRIM took part in an interview and presented how the collaboration between industry and research is done within MarineGuardian. Multiple other MarineGuardian partners attended the conference as well and shared project insights.
There’s something special about meeting face-to-face.
Over the past two days, the MarineGuardian team was reunited in Reykjavík for our second scientific committee meeting, a time to reflect, share, and look ahead together. We reviewed the work done in the last three months: the tests we’ve run, the obstacles we faced, and the progress we made towards healthier seas.
Then, we turned our minds toward the next six months, exploring how we can enhance the collaboration and increase our impact. Through three creative workshops, we stepped out of our usual roles to imagine a bright future and seeing the oceans through the eyes of different stakeholders, and imagine a world where today’s issues are only a bad memory.
One workshop was focused on drawing and expressing who we are within MarineGuardian: what drives us, and what kind of future we hope to build together. Stay tuned, we have some beautiful outcomes to share soon!
We reflected on real-world impact, analysing how our solutions are shaped by real-world needs and what barriers and enablers will be linked to their development and commercialisation.
Meeting in person reminded us that collaboration is more than collecting, analysing data and sharing goals, it’s about building trust, curiosity, and shared purpose.
These two days have strengthened the bonds that will carry us through the next four years of this exciting journey….not alone as our sister project, Eco-Catch, was with us and we started exploring new ways to work hand-in-hand for sustainable oceans.
Step by steps and hands to hands, we are building a more sustainable ocean future.
In September, MarineGuardian took part in high-level discussions that connect science, policy, and practice in marine protection.
At the Danish EU Presidency in Nyborg, Denmark, our coordinator Jónas Viðarsson joined forces with Elsa Cuende (AZTI, WP2 leader), as well as C. Manago M and Harald Hasler-Sheetal (ICES) to showcase MarineGuardian’s work and strengthen ties with key European initiatives and our sister project ECO-CATCH Project.
Following that, Jónas, Caecilia, and Harald represented MarineGuardian at the All-Atlantic Forum (AAORIA), contributing to the global dialogue on sustainable oceans. They had the opportunity to give talks about the project and shared a booth with BioProtect Project showcasing their common efforts to an ocean in better health in the future. The coordinators even had the opportunity to talk about them for an interview on the Iceland radio RÚV.
Meanwhile, Ana Marçalo (CCMAR) brought valuable insights to the ICES Working Group on Bycatch of Protected Species (WGBIC), sharing research on bycatch in Portuguese beach seine fisheries and highlighting MarineGuardian’s role in tackling this pressing issue.
Finally, two of the Icelandic partners Hafrannsóknastofnun – Marine & Freshwater Research Institute and BRIM represented respectively by Haraldur A. Einarsson and Sveinn Margeirsson where featured on the Matís Iceland podcast Matvælið and discussed MarineGuardian and marine research, sustainable fisheries and the adaptability of the industry. The podcast (in Icelandic) is available here.
From the North to the south of Europe, these exchanges help amplify MarineGuardian’s impact, ensuring our voice is heard across science, industry, and policy making communities.
And this is only the beginning — stay tuned as we continue to build bridges and scale our collective efforts for healthier oceans.
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