Vision system measures scallops
Between July and August each year, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service conducts surveys to determine the abundance and size distribution of deep-sea scallops in areas between Cape Hatteras, NC, and Georges Bank (a large elevated area of the sea floor that separates the Gulf of Maine from the Atlantic Ocean, situated between Cape Cod, MA, and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, Canada). To do this, sample height measurements from 125,000 scallops are taken from approximately 500 randomly selected locations using an 8-ft scallop dredge towed at 3.5 knots for 15 min. To increase the accuracy and speed of these measurements over current methods, William Kramer, an IT specialist at the NOAA Woods Hole Laboratory on Cape Cod, obtained a Pioneer Funding grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust to develop a prototype machine-vision system.