A Tool Supporting the Extraction of Angling Effort Data from Remote Camera Images

Estimating angling effort on more than a few lakes can be prohibitively expensive using creel surveys and often requires finer-scale angler distribution data than aerial surveys can provide. An alternate method uses remote cameras to capture images of lakes at hourly intervals over long time periods. Technicians then visually analyze the thousands of generated images for features of interest (e.g., angler counts and environmental conditions) and use those data to estimate angling effort. The problem is that the visual analysis step is time-consuming, expensive, and difficult to validate. Consequently, we elicited the strategies and best practices technicians used when analyzing images and identified bottlenecks. We then designed software, called Timelapse to better support image analysis. In use for several years, Timelapse has proven a cost-effective method of estimating angling effort in British Columbia's small lakes fisheries; it significantly eases a technician's workflow and doubles the number of images one can process per hour.