New website to tally salmon count in Miramichi River

Researchers at the University of New Brunswick recently launched a website to raise public awareness on the revival of Atlantic salmon stocks in the Miramichi River. The website, www.castsalmon.com, will be linked to underwater sonar cameras to determine the daily salmon count for better information management.  The project, called the Adaptive Resolution Imaging Sonar (ARIS), has yet to reach its goal of fully automating the tally of Atlantic salmon. For now, the daily count is still subject to human review of sonar data collected. Eventually, the researchers are looking to fully utilize computer analysis of the images to generate the count.  Researchers with the Canadian Rivers Institute are spearheading the project under the Collaboration for Atlantic Salmon Tomorrow (CAST). This is a partnership of scientists, environmental groups and industry participants seeking ways to reverse the sharp decline of the wild Atlantic salmon and recovering stock.