What If You Could Check Fish Freshness With Your Phone? We're Building It.

Here is a question that most seafood consumers have asked at some point: How do I actually know if this fish is fresh? You might press the flesh to see if it springs back. You might check the eyes for clarity. You might smell it. But honestly, unless you are a trained fishmonger, you are guessing.

We are building a tool that eliminates the guesswork. A mobile application that uses your smartphone camera and our patented algorithms to give you a real-time freshness score for the fish you are about to buy. It is called the DENGiZ project, and it is one of the most ambitious things I have worked on in my career.

The Problem: A Trust Gap in Seafood

Seafood is one of the most perishable food categories. From the moment a fish leaves the water, a complex chain of biochemical changes begins -- enzymatic degradation, microbial growth, oxidation. The speed of this deterioration depends on species, temperature, handling, and time. For consumers, this creates a fundamental trust problem.

Currently, the tools available for freshness assessment fall into two categories, and neither serves the average consumer:

• Subjective sensory evaluation: Trained panelists assess eyes, gills, skin, and smell using standardized scales like the EU Quality Index Method (QIM). Accurate when done by experts, but not available at a retail counter.
• Laboratory analysis: Chemical tests for Total Volatile Basic Nitrogen (TVB-N), trimethylamine (TMA), K-value, and microbial counts. Highly accurate but destructive, slow (hours to days), and expensive.

Neither option helps a consumer standing in front of a fish counter at 6 PM on a Tuesday, trying to decide what to cook for dinner.

The DENGiZ Project

DENGiZ stands for "Denizden Sofraya Guvenli ve Izlenebilir Balik" -- Green Wave: Safe and Traceable Fish from Sea to Table. It is a national project funded by TUBITAK SAYEM (the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey's Industry-Academia Collaboration program) and developed in partnership with Migros, Turkey's largest food retailer.

The project's scope goes beyond a simple freshness checker. We are building a complete sea-to-table traceability system that follows fish from the point of catch through processing, distribution, and retail -- with freshness assessment available at every stage.

How the App Will Work

The user experience we are designing is intentionally simple. Here is the flow:

• Step 1 - Capture: The user opens the app and points their smartphone camera at a whole fish or fillet
• Step 2 - Analyze: The app captures an image and sends it to our cloud-based processing engine
• Step 3 - Score: Our patented algorithms analyze visual freshness indicators and return a freshness score within seconds
• Step 4 - Trace: If the product has a DENGiZ QR code, the app also displays the complete journey of that fish -- where it was caught, when, how it was stored, and its temperature history

The Technology Stack

Behind the simple user interface lies a sophisticated technology pipeline:

Computer Vision: The core of the system is image analysis. Our algorithms evaluate multiple visual parameters simultaneously -- color distribution across key anatomical regions (eyes, gills, skin), surface texture characteristics, and optical reflectance patterns. These are the same parameters that expert sensory panels evaluate, but quantified digitally.

Patented Algorithms: Our ISIF 2024 gold medal-winning patent provides the foundational method for correlating digital image data with freshness indicators. This is what differentiates DENGiZ from generic image recognition -- our models are trained specifically on the relationship between visual appearance and biochemically verified freshness levels.

Cloud AI: The heavy computational work happens in the cloud. This keeps the mobile app lightweight and allows us to continuously improve the models without requiring users to update their app. As we collect more data from Migros stores, the system gets smarter.

Traceability Infrastructure: The traceability component uses QR codes and a blockchain-inspired ledger to create an immutable record of each product's journey. Temperature loggers, GPS data from fishing vessels, and processing timestamps all feed into this record.

What "Sea to Table Traceability" Means in Practice

Traceability is a word that gets used a lot in food industry marketing. Let me be specific about what it means in the DENGiZ context:

• Catch data: Species, catch method, GPS coordinates, vessel identification, date and time
• Processing data: Facility, handling procedures, cold chain compliance
• Distribution data: Transport conditions, temperature logs, time stamps at each transfer point
• Retail data: Arrival time at store, display conditions, freshness assessment at receiving

When a consumer scans a DENGiZ QR code, they see all of this. Not a marketing story -- actual data. This level of transparency has never been available to Turkish seafood consumers before.

Who Benefits?

Consumers get objective freshness information and complete transparency about where their food comes from. No more guessing. No more relying solely on trust.

Retailers like Migros gain a powerful quality assurance tool that works at scale. Instead of testing a few samples per shipment, they can assess every product. This reduces waste, improves customer satisfaction, and strengthens brand trust.

The fishing industry benefits from a system that rewards quality. When freshness is objectively measurable and visible to consumers, there is a direct incentive to maintain better cold chains and handling practices.

Sustainability improves because better freshness management means less food waste. The FAO estimates that up to 35% of seafood is lost or wasted globally. A significant portion of that waste is due to uncertainty about freshness -- products that are discarded "just in case." Better data means fewer fish thrown away.

Timeline and Current Status

The DENGiZ project kicked off in early 2025. Here is where we stand:

• Completed: Core algorithm development, patent registration, initial dataset collection
• In progress: Mobile app development, cloud infrastructure setup, Migros pilot planning
• Next phase: Pilot deployment in selected Migros stores, user testing, model refinement
• Target: Public beta launch within the project timeline

The Migros partnership is critical. It gives us access to real supply chain data -- thousands of data points across species, seasons, and supply routes -- that no laboratory experiment could replicate. This real-world training data is what will make the difference between a research prototype and a tool people actually use.

Looking Ahead

DENGiZ is, in many ways, the project I have been building toward for my entire career. The computer vision research in Auckland. The spectroscopy work at Ohio State. The years of freshness assessment studies. The patent. They all converge here -- in a tool that puts the power of scientific freshness assessment into everyone's pocket.

We are not the only team working on food quality apps, and I think that is a good thing. The more attention this space gets, the better for consumers everywhere. But I believe our combination of patented methodology, peer-reviewed research foundation, and direct industry partnership with Migros gives DENGiZ a genuine edge.

I will be sharing updates on this project as we hit milestones. If you want to follow along, subscribe to the newsletter or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Are you working in food traceability or quality assessment technology? I am always interested in exchanging ideas with others in this space. Reach out through the contact page.

Prof. Dr. Zayde Ayvaz

Professor of Fisheries Industry Engineering at COMU. Researching AI-driven seafood quality assessment and sustainable blue food systems.