Design and Initial Validation of an Infrared Beam-Break Fish Counter ('Fish Tracker') for Fish Passage Monitoring.

ABSTRACT: Effective monitoring of fish passage through river barriers is essential for evaluating fishway performance and supporting adaptive river management. Traditional methods are often invasive, labor-intensive, or too costly to enable widespread implementation across most fishways. Infrared (IR) beam-break counters offer a promising alternative, but their adoption has been limited by high costs and a lack of flexibility. We developed and tested a novel, low-cost infrared beam-break counter-FishTracker-based on open-source Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms. The system detects fish passages by analyzing interruptions in an IR curtain and reconstructing fish silhouettes to estimate movement, direction, speed, and morphometrics under a wide range of turbidity conditions. It also offers remote acc

SUBMITTER: Fuentes-Perez JF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12251766 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature