Innovasea is steering a CAN$4.8 million (€3 million) effort to help hydropower operators automatically identify fish species as they pass through monitoring stations, a task that currently demands hours of manual review.
The new initiative, called Species Aware, is backed partly by Canada’s Ocean Supercluster (OSC) and will see Canadian power companies test the technology at selected dam sites.
“Through the Species Aware Project, we’re delivering the next wave of AI innovation for fish passage monitoring,” said Mark Jollymore, Innovasea’s chief executive.
Automating the process, he argued, can ‘streamline compliance, reduce downtime and collect vital data to protect and support the surrounding ecosystem’.
Species recognition will be layered into HydroAI, Innovasea’s existing real-time counting tool. The new models rely on visual cues such as shape, size and colouring learned from extensive footage. The upcoming tests aim to reveal how well those models hold up in murky, unpredictable environments that differ significantly from controlled training conditions.
Jean Quirion, the company’s vice president of R&D for Fish Tracking, called the feature a ‘new level of monitoring capability’ for HydroAI. “We’re excited to develop this new capability, test it across diverse hydropower environments and prove its field effectiveness,” he said.
The Ocean Supercluster is contributing more than CAN$2 million (€1.24 million) through Canada’s Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, framing the project as a win for both renewable energy and biodiversity.
“Projects like Species Aware show how Canadian innovation can advance clean energy while protecting biodiversity,” said OSC chief executive Kendra MacDonald. She added that AI-enabled monitoring could unlock new hydropower opportunities and support the community’s Ambition 2035 goal of expanding the country’s ocean economy fivefold.
