Thursday May 29, 2025
SeafoodSource —
A team of scientists from the University of California San Diego, University of California Davis, and the University of Washington plan to use a mobile camera mounted system to determine the anatomical traits of white sturgeon.
The proposed approach aims to reduce the need for farmers to manually handle and sedate sturgeon while simultaneously enhancing production.
“Thanks to funding from the [U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture] and U.S. National Science Foundation, we will be able to create advanced machine learning models … to analyze images to distinguish between male and female fish with increasing accuracy over time,” UC Davis Postdoctoral Fellow Edwin Solares said. “Traditional sex determination methods – such as ultrasound – require extensive handling, trained staff, and significant labor, whereas our proposed system eliminates stress to fish, increases throughput, and reduces costs.”
The researchers teamed up with California sturgeon producers to collect preliminary images to train the AI models. The models were then trained to identify subtle distinctions between male and female sturgeon that are imperceptible to the human eye.