Automatic identification of northern pike (Exos Lucius) with convolutional neural networks

Abstract: The population of northern pike in the Baltic sea has seen a drasticdecrease in numbers in the last couple of decades. The reasons for this are believed to be many, but the majority of them are most likely anthropogenic. Today, many measures are being taken to prevent further decline of pike populations, ranging from nutrient runoff control to habitat restoration. This inevitably gives rise to the problem addressed in this project, namely: how can we best monitor pike populations so that it is possible to accurately assess and verify the effects of these measures over the coming decades? Pike is currently monitored in Sweden by employing expensive and ineffective manual methods of individual marking of pike by a handful of experts. This project provides evidence that such methods could be replaced by a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), an automatic artificial intelligence system, which can be taught how to identify pike individuals based on their unique patterns. A neural net simulates the functions of neurons in the human brain, which allows it to perform a range of tasks, while a CNN is a neural net specialized for this type of visual recognition task. The results show that the CNN trained in this project can identify pike individuals in the provided data set with upwards of 90% accuracy, with much potential for improvement.