MelopsReID: A wild fish image dataset for re-identification

Melops Dataset (Head & Body Crops) for Fish Re-Identification

This dataset contains cropped head and body images of the corkwing wrasse (Symphodus melops), collected during a 7-year capture–mark–recapture program in Norway (2018–2024). Each fish was PIT-tagged for ground-truth identity and photographed on both left and right sides.

Included files:

Melops_head.zip — cropped head images

Melops_body.zip — cropped body images

Melops_final.txt — metadata with IDs, capture info, and annotations

_fish_faces_export.zip - (FishFace135 triplets: manifest.csv, manifest_time.csv, answer_key.csv, responses_template.csv, plus Google Form builder script)

readme.pdf - detailed description of the dataset, columnnames etc. Please read carefully before any use of the data

metadata_and_code.zip - metadata file and R code for visualizing the data and generating triplets (fishfacesampler), as well as the results from the human benchmark analysis

Use this dataset for developing and benchmarking temporal re-identification models in wild fish.

Citation:Sørdalen, TK & Halvorsen, KT (2025). MelopsReID: A wild fish image dataset for re-identification. Zenodo.