Optimisation of digital catch monitoring and reporting in the European Fisheries OptiFish aims to develop, test, and validate technologies that will improve onboard monitoring of catch volumes and fish health, enabling fishers to improve the sustainability of their operations, and better meet control requirements. More specifically, the technologies investigated during the project will enable automated species recognition based on AI and computer vision to reduce discards, unreported landings, and unreported fishing activities, establishing a fisheries control and enforcement system fit for the digital age. A Horizon Europe research initiative developing innovative technologies for digital catch monitoring in the fisheries sector. By combining AI, computer vision, robotics and eDNA analysis, the project aims to enable real-time data collection on board fishing vessels. This will help with accurate species identification, better reporting and regulatory compliance. The project envisions optimizing eDNA technology for different types of fisheries to obtain reliable estimates of species composition of catches. For Belgium, the focus is on beam trawling. In addition, research is also performed on where the water can be optimally collected during the process from fishing to storage on board the vessel to best describe the catch. This requires controlled tests aboard a research vessel with beam trawl to evaluate where sample contamination is most critical.