Smolt Sonar Monitoring
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Video Selection
Choose a preprocessed sonar video from the examples provided below, or upload your own sonar footage.
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Run the ML model
Click the 'Submit' button to initiate the detection and tracking pipeline.
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Visualize the results
The system will generate an annotated video with bounding boxes around detected smolt, track their movement, and count individuals by migration direction.
Overview
Smolt Sonar Monitoring detects, tracks, and counts juvenile salmon as they migrate downstream — straight from ARIS sonar footage. Developed with BC Hydro and Lumax AI, it was built around sonar collected at Jansen Lake on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
Sonar is essential here because smolt migrate in turbid water, at night, and in dense bursts where optical cameras fail. ARIS produces video-like acoustic images that make small fish visible in those conditions — but reviewing that footage by hand is slow and error-prone. This tool automates the count.
How It Works
From a sonar clip to a directional count:
Sonar video input
Works directly on ARIS acoustic imagery — choose a preprocessed example sequence or upload your own sonar footage.
Smolt detection
Deep-learning object detection finds individual smolt in noisy acoustic frames and marks each with a bounding box.
Movement tracking
A tracker follows each fish across frames, so the same smolt isn't counted twice as it passes through the sonar beam.
Directional counting
Counts individuals by migration direction, separating genuine downstream migrants from fish drifting the other way.
Why Count Smolt
Population trends
Smolt counts over multiple years reveal whether a salmon population is growing, stable, or heading toward collapse.
Dam impact
Counts above and below infrastructure quantify how dams and turbines affect downstream fish survival.
Compliance & management
Consistent, auditable counts feed regulatory reporting and decisions on dam operations and habitat restoration.
Learn more about the project
See the full smolt sonar monitoring project and our work with BC Hydro and Lumax AI — the ARIS pipeline behind this tool.
View the project