A project report submitted for the award of BSc. Computer Science
Abstract
Fish schools are a common and well known phenomenon that includes several different types of behaviour from unaligned shoals to bait balls. It has however been difficult to test what causes the different types of schooling behaviour with computer models as there has never been a single algorithm that could simulate the many different types of behaviour that has been observed in the wild. With the creation of the projection swarm simulation it has now become possible to test what environmental conditions observed in nature, including the need to find food and survive predator attacks, lead to what schooling behaviours. The optimal behaviour of the fish under each isolated environment was found by simulating evolution on the school using a genetic algorithm, with the results compared to observations of real fish stocks.