Saltwater

Saltwater was founded in 1988 on the belief that the health of fisheries and oceans is one of the critical issues of our time.

We were one of the first companies certified to provide observers when U.S. fishery observer programs were first established. Over the years our commitment to our mission – and our people – have enabled us to attract and retain top talent.

As electronic monitoring technologies have advanced we have built on our observer expertise to launch a successful electronic monitoring (EM) program. This includes reliable, seaworthy EM systems that use open-source software to collect high quality data, and a skilled team of technicians and data reviewers.

Today Saltwater is a recognized industry leader in the design and implementation of both fishery and marine mammal observer programs – and an innovator in the use of new technologies and electronic monitoring for data collection. We serve hundreds of clients including public agencies, non-profit research organizations, and fishermen.

Developing Machine Learning Tools with the West Coast Groundfish Fleet
In 2019, Saltwater and Chordata were contracted by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to develop a computer vision (CV) algorithm using data collected onboard a volunteer groundfish trawl vessel fishing from Warrenton, Oregon. This is part EDF’s Smart Boat Initiative, which will hopefully contribute to finding efficiencies in EM data review. Our SWIM system collected quality data of fishing activity during a single season. With a limited timeframe and a small amount of data, we developed a preliminary algorithm that we plan to further develop with additional data

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, NOAA ProTech-Fisheries Contractor and Certified Women Owned Small Business.