Automatic Fish Species Identification Using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN)

Accurate identification of fish species is critical for applications in fisheries management., biodiversity monitoring., and conservation efforts. Conventional manual identification techniques take a lot of time and are prone to mistakes., particularly when working with big datasets and species that have similar physical characteristics. Automating tasks related to species identification has shown promise in recent breakthroughs in machine learning., especially in deep learning techniques like Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and transfer learning. However., these systems face several challenges., including high variability in fish appearances., limited availability of labelled datasets., and the computational overhead required for real-time classification. This research study presents a fish species classification system using a transfer learning approach based on MobileNetV2. MobileNetV2., known for its efficiency and lightweight architecture., is fine-tuned on a custom fish dataset to enhance species identification accuracy while minimizing computational requirements. To increase the model's resilience and ability to generalise to new species., data augmentation approaches are used. The system is designed to deliver high classification accuracy while maintaining computational efficiency., making it suitable for deployment in real-world applications with limited resources. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system achieves significant improvements in accuracy compared to traditional methods., while also addressing the challenges of dataset variability and overfitting.