FishSense Lite: A Camera-Based, Single Laser Hardware Framework with Software System for In Situ Fish Length Measurement
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Fish stock assessments need fish lengths paired with species from far more places than trained surveyors can reach. Recreationaldivers already visit many of those places, but measuring a fish underwater has required trained observers or specialist equipment.We present FishSense Lite, which recovers fish length from a single photograph taken with a recreational dive camera, a dive laserpointer, and a 3D-printed mount. The diver aims the laser at a fish and takes a picture; afterward, the dot’s position in the imagegives the range to the fish, and the range turns the fish’s size in the image into a length. A citizen-science program, trained by thesystem’s builders, taught its own divers and collected lengths paired with species for 73 wild fish across seven open-water dives. Onseven wild fish also measured by an underwater stereo-imaging system, the two instruments agreed without detectable bias (meandifference +0.8%). On rigid targets of known length, FishSense Lite recovered every target to within 1.3%, and 99% of 1,055 frames fellwithin a 15% error budget. From the error sources we measure, we derive a field protocol: calibrate against a dive slate on every dive,photograph fish within 15° of perpendicular and beyond 1 m, and take at least ten frames of each.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Language: English
Subfield: Water Science and Technology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Life below water
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225421490