Introducing the CAST Project

Thanks for checking out our Blog for Competitive Angling as a Scientific Tool (or "CAST"…see what we did there..?!)

Who are we?

We are a team of scientific researchers from the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Portsmouth. Our Sea Angling project aims to use data collected from local sea angling competitions to provide a novel insight into the distribution, life stages and habitat preferences of data-poor fisheries in the Solent.

Our Sea Angling research team are partnering with Angling Spirit who organise angling competitions in the UK and Europe, with data collected at the annual Sea Angling Classic being the main focus of our project.

The information will improve our understanding of five popular targets for recreational anglers: Bass, Bream, Skates & Rays, Smoothhound and Tope.

The project will also develop a new AI software to assist with the identification of species with far reaching applications outside of this project.

Thanks for joining us and watching our progress through this fascinating project.

How can you help?

To train our AI models, we need as many photographs of each of our 5 species on a ruler or measuring board as possible. The more photos we get the more efficient it will become at automatically identifying and measuring any photo of a these fish, making data collection quicker and more effective.

Feel free to email us with any questions along the way: christina.hunt@port.ac.uk

Or check out our socials:

Facebook: Competitive Angling as a Scientific Tool-Portsmouth Uni Marine Biology

Instagram: @cast_uop