The salmon is now being asked to count itself on the way home
the salmon is now being asked to count itself on the way home: a system called salmonvision fuses underwater cameras, sonar and drones to tally wild fish in real time, alaska’s sitka tribe runs an ai weir that counts sockeye at 95 percent confidence, and aris sonar logs every adult in scotland’s core rivers.
the river now files its own return count.
Context
SalmonVision's about page says it began pilot projects in 2024 running AI analysis for local and Indigenous communities on the north and central coast of British Columbia, to give in-season information on returning salmon. Its homepage, surfaced in search, describes cameras, sonar and aerial drones as ways to collect data in remote watersheds.
KCAW reported on August 5, 2026 that the Sitka Tribe of Alaska introduced an AI video system at the Redoubt weir. Resource Protection director Jeff Feldpausch said the Tribe is the first entity in Alaska he knows of using it, that the system draws a box around each fish and assigns a species, and that the counts upload in real time. He said the program reached about a 95% confidence interval on counting sockeye. The Atlantic Salmon Trust says ARIS sonar counters recorded 904 returning adult salmon on the Laxford and 6,147 on the Deveron in 2025.
The note says SalmonVision fuses cameras, sonar and drones. The pages read describe separate video, sonar and aerial workflows and do not say the data are fused into one count, so 'fuses' is unsupported here, not refuted.
The 95% is a quote from the Tribe's director who said about a 95% confidence interval, which is a loose use of the term and not a published accuracy figure. The Redoubt system is a camera chute with its own AI, and the KCAW story does not name SalmonVision as the supplier, so the note's link between the two is the author's.
The Scottish sonar counts come from Projects Laxford and Deveron, two rivers, and the Atlantic Salmon Trust page read does not say 'every adult' in Scotland's core rivers is logged. The note's 'ARIS logs every adult in scotland's core rivers' is wider than the 2025 counts for these two rivers.
Related work
- About Salmon Vision (SalmonVision) ↗Source for SalmonVision's aims, pilot start and open resources.
- 'There's no funding for the weir right now': Sitka Tribe of Alaska introduces AI monitoring at Redoubt (KCAW, August 5, 2026) ↗Source for the Redoubt AI weir, its real-time upload and the 95% quote.
- Core Rivers 2025 Adult Salmon Sonar Counts Announced (Atlantic Salmon Trust, August 6, 2026) ↗Source for the 2025 ARIS sonar counts on the Laxford and Deveron.
Watch next
- Look for a published validation of the Redoubt counts. Check which Scottish rivers have ARIS counters beyond Laxford and Deveron.
Sources
- SalmonVisionsalmonvision.org
- KCAW: Sitka Tribe of Alaska introduces AI monitoring at Redoubtkcaw.org
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 3 October 2026 at 20:48 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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