OnDeck Fisheries AI

As global fish stocks decline more rapidly every year, governments around the world are rushing to massively scale up their ability to monitor fishing activity and mitigate the disastrous effects of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU). The monitoring industry is struggling to meet this surging demand due to the drawbacks of current monitoring strategies. These strategies rely heavily on manual video review, and are thus slow, expensive, and impossible to scale up to meet the increasing demand. Therefore we do not truly know what is happening out at sea, and we cannot manage our oceans effectively. 

Despite worldwide investments in excess of $1 billion in fisheries monitoring annually, more than one third of all catch at sea goes unreported. And the problem has reached a breaking point, as worldwide demand for fishing increases, it is estimated that by 2028 fishing fleets will be generating 12 years of video footage every single day. The world desperately needs better monitoring solutions if we are to manage, and protect this integral resource.

Worldwide 2.9 billion people rely on fish as a source of protein, making sustainable fishing vital for ensuring food security and nutrition. Many of these people are from coastal, Indigenous or rural communities who also rely on the fishing industry for their livelihoods. Despite the undeniable importance of the world’s fish stocks to our global economy, two thirds of fish stocks are currently in decline, threatening not only the global economy, but the 600 million livelihoods that rely on the industry for employment. At OnDeck we are dedicated to reversing this by fostering sustainable fishing practices that will ensure the health of fish stocks for generations to come.

We are solving this problem by automating fisheries monitoring with artificial intelligence. Our technology automatically detects and tracks fishing catch using the cameras on vessels that are already in place for compliance. We provide a cloud analytics platform for automated review and analysis of video footage so that governments and fishermen can see what is going on at sea, in near real-time, at a fraction of the cost, and at a scale the world has never seen. Specifically, our solution delivers: 

1. Catch reporting accuracy: Through accurately identifying catch from onboard cameras, we reduce unreported catches, ensuring more sustainable fishing practices. 

2. Bycatch reduction: Our technology helps minimize unintentional catches of non-target species, such as sharks or dolphins - preserving marine biodiversity. 

3. Illegal Fishing Deterrence: We deter illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing activities, contributing to better enforcement of fishing regulations. 

4. Regulatory Compliance: We aid fisheries management agencies, governments, and private industry in monitoring and enforcing regulations, creating sustainable fishing policies, amending quotas, and enhancing resource management. 

5. Reduced Carbon Footprint: Through our analytics tools fishermen will be able to employ precision fishing techniques, and reduce their fuel consumption on trips. 

6. Data Accessibility: With our tools, data required for fisheries management will be available to enable informed decision-making, much more timely, more affordably, and scalably. 

Despite the undeniable importance of the world’s fish stocks to our global economy, two thirds of fish stocks are currently in decline, threatening not only the global economy but the 800 million livelihoods that rely on the industry for employment. We are dedicated to reversing this by fostering sustainable fishing practices that will ensure the health of fish stocks for generations to come, and the communities that the industry supports. The ways our technology will make an impact: 

Economic growth: 

• $80 billion lost every year due to IUU fishing and mismanagement. 

• $11 billion in cost savings available annually for fishing companies through fishing analytics like OnDeck’s.   

Food Security: 

• Protecting the fish stocks that 2.9 billion people worldwide rely on for protein. 

Conservation: 

• Our AI scales up fisheries monitoring by automating data collection, enabling real-time insights over vast marine areas, and greatly enhancing our understanding of ecosystem health and fishing activities.
• By making fisheries monitoring affordable and accessible, we empower resource-strapped governments and organizations to enforce sustainable fishing practices, ensuring the preservation of marine biodiversity and securing the livelihoods of coastal communities.

Safeguarding Human Rights: 

By providing scalable transparency into working conditions at sea, OnDeck: 

• Prevents illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. 

• Deters exploitative labor practices at sea and promotes ethical fishing operations that prioritize the well-being of workers.

OnDeck Fisheries AI was founded by a group of students who are deeply passionate about solving the issues facing our oceans. Our CEO and Co-Founder, Alexander Dungate, was inspired to start OnDeck because of the teachings of his professor and renowned marine biologist, Dr. Amanda Vincent, who lectured on the misreporting of catch and the devastating rates of bycatch in the fishing industry. The issues Dr. Vincent highlighted were also close to home, as Alexander grew up fishing for prawns, and when big commercial fishers would come through the bay they would leave coastal stocks decimated. 

Our CTO and Co-Founder Sepand Dyanatkar, saw that with his skill set in machine learning and computer vision, a unique set of tools could be created to solve the problems facing our oceans. Immediately it became clear that there is a very real business need for AI automation in the space, and OnDeck Fisheries AI was born. 140+ customer interviews later, we are constantly refining our vision to make monitoring scalable and ensure we are delivering real value to the fishing industry, and to the communities that inspired OnDeck's journey from the beginning. 

OnDeck is leading a $3.5M project alongside the Canadian government, and industry frontrunners to modernize fisheries monitoring with artificial intelligence. For this project we are collaborating with governments, commercial fishermen, NGOs, and Indigenous communities in Canada to unlock affordable and actionable fisheries management. We have begun working with one of the biggest fisheries monitoring companies to deploy our tools on vessels from the Nuu-chah-nulth Indigenous Nation on the west coast of Canada. This is one of our largest projects to date, but it is not our first. 

Our tools are also deployed on vessels in the Central Eastern Pacific Ocean, delivering near-real time catch and bycatch insights. Throughout this project we have been able to advance our technology exponentially, and make invaluable connections with future customers all around the world.

Our achievements have also been recognized through many awards and grants, including being named a National Geographic explorer, winning 1st place in the Dempsey Startup Competition, victories in Canada’s Ocean Startup Challenge, and the Sustainable Harvesting Award from the Ocean Impact Organization, among others.

Our goal is to share our solution with as many communities around the world as possible. To date, we have been extremely successful with creating a network of some of the most influential people in the ocean ecosystem. We are collaborating with governments, industry, NGOs, and Indigenous communities to unlock affordable and actionable fisheries management. Our goal with becoming a Solver is to unlock even greater opportunities with companies, NGOs, and fishing communities from your network. We are inspired by the network Solve has created, and are excited at the opportunity to become a part of it. 

By building advanced AI analysis tools for fisheries monitoring, we are making it feasible for regulators and fishers around the world to sustain ocean economies with transparent and timely reporting. Currently, the human video review process introduces a painstakingly long delay between when a fish is caught at sea and when accurate and reliable reporting is available. We are bridging this gap at an unprecedented scale, utilizing innovative machine learning models to visualize timely and accurate fishing data never before seen on our customer facing dashboard.

We are taking state-of-the-art, experimental approaches from recent machine learning literature and adapting them to the vast variety of bottlenecks in fisheries monitoring. There is very little literature of specific methods or commercialization of solutions for overboard fishing monitoring, and this is where we are moving the needle. We are specializing our foundational models to apply specifically to fishing data. 

Our technology will also be the first opportunity for fishermen to truly use their own data to make more informed, empowered, and sustainable decisions for their fisheries. Data collected from fishing vessels is currently fragmented, complicated and unscalable. Our cloud infrastructure will revolutionize this process for regulators and fisheries managers alike. Through our dashboard, fishers will be able to guarantee the traceability of their seafood, create automated logbooks, and reduce fuel consumption - revolutionizing the seafood market, and ensuring sustainable fish stocks for generations. 

Our tech will have a profound impact addressing the most dire challenges facing the fishing industry today, particularly the global overfishing crisis. By enabling scalable and sustainable fisheries management practices, our technology not only benefits our customer’s through more affordable and efficient data collection and analysis, but also contributes significantly to the achievement of several SDGs. 

SDG 14 (Life Below Water): Our AI-enabled electronic monitoring system plays a pivotal role in combating overfishing by providing comprehensive and real-time monitoring of fishing activities. Our AI algorithms analyze fishing data, automatically detecting instances of illegal fishing or overfishing, such as exceeding catch limits, or fishing endangered or protected species. 

SDG 2 (Zero Hunger): 2.9 billion people worldwide rely on fish as a source of protein, making sustainable fishing vital for ensuring food security and nutrition. By managing fisheries sustainably, our technology supports the availability and accessibility of nutritious food sources, particularly for coastal, Indigenous, or rural communities that depend on these resources. 

SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth): Despite the undeniable importance of the world’s fish stocks to our global economy, two thirds of fish stocks are currently in decline, threatening not only the global economy but the 600 million livelihoods that rely on the industry for employment. We are dedicated to reversing this by fostering sustainable fishing practices that will ensure the health of fish stocks for generations. 

OnDeck uses the latest advancements in AI and machine learning research to automatically detect fishing activity. We use computer vision to help humans watch millions of hours of video that is generated from fishing vessels, an insurmountable task without AI. AI automation will cut costs by a factor of 10, and be performed in near-real time compared to the months required by human review. As the future of fisheries hangs in the balance, it is imperative that we gain accurate and timely insights into our oceans. This begins with having precise and up-to-date fishing data.

This article, published by McKinsey & Company, highlights the immense opportunity that timely & accurate fishing data will bring to both commercial fishermen for analytics, and to governments for compliance. With OnDeck's technology we are able to bridge the gap that all sides of the fishing industry need to sustainably manage our fisheries. 

LINK: https://www.mckinsey.com/indus... 

6 FTE, 3PTE, 3 contractors. 

OnDeck was incorporated in 2022.

At OnDeck we are dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce that reflects the richness of our community. We believe that diversity and equity are essential drivers of innovation, productivity, and organizational success. We are committed to promoting a respectful workplace, achieving diversity targets, and fostering a culture of inclusion at all times. Presently, 67% of our team comes from diverse backgrounds, and we remain steadfast in our efforts to maintain a supportive atmosphere for all past, present, and prospective employees. 

Our technology addresses a critical need in the fisheries monitoring industry. As global fish stocks decline at an alarming rate, the demand for highly efficient and scalable monitoring solutions is skyrocketing. Despite annual investment of over $1 billion in monitoring, more than ⅓ of all catch at sea goes unreported, leaving whole ecosystems vulnerable to collapse. We are changing that. 

Our approach is to offer monthly subscriptions in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model to Electronic Monitoring (EM) providers and fishermen themselves. We have identified two key revenue streams: 

1. SaaS Revenues: We provide AI-powered video review tools to electronic monitoring providers, automating the review process. Our tools significantly enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness. We've tested our tools with leading monitoring companies, and demonstrated cost savings from 40%- 90% for pelagic longline fisheries.

2. AI Insights: OnDeck's AI platform will analyze fishing data and provide valuable insights back to industry, catalyzing fishing efficiency, and reducing fuel usage.