Sea Lice New tools
Innovative funnels, traps, cameras and ‘vacuum cleaners’ add to farmers’ armoury
AS pressure intensifies this year on Scottish salmon and trout farms to control sea lice, this month we look at the new tools emerging on to the market. New rules introduced by the Scottish government in 2020 will require each fish farm to report weekly sea lice numbers to the fish health inspectorate. Every sea lice report will also be published for public scrutiny on a monthly basis.
On top of this, the current reporting and intervention thresholds have reduced from three and eight average adult female lice per fish to two and six, respectively, to allow earlier intervention and enforcement action.
These new regulations are pushing fish farmers to investigate better ways to monitor and combat the harmful parasite.
One new device, designed by Norwegian biotech company Blue Lice, attracts sea lice into a trap. Blue Lice’s CEO Karoline Sjødal Olsen told Fish Farmer: ‘The aquaculture industry’s licence to operate, and to increase the salmon production in the future, depends on how it’s able to tackle the challenges related to sea lice in a sustainable way.
‘The goal in the future would be to not handle the fish for the entire cycle in the water. Our technology is a preventive method that will attract, capture and contain sea lice before they can cause damage.
‘We capture sea lice in the larvae stage, which is different from treatments that treat in the adult stage of the lice when it has attached to a fish.
‘It is well known that ectoparasite sea lice in the copepodite stage are attracted to light and scent signals. In addition, we introduce a third component- water turbulence- to mimic the movement of fish.
‘Our system prevents sea lice from affecting farmed salmon, saving costs, and reducing the
need for treatment.
‘The solution also aims to improve fish welfare by less handling of the fish, while increasing the quality and production rate for farmed salmon.
‘The system is also user friendly and will not recquire a lot of handling from the fish farmer on site. It will be a passive system working continuously on the farm.’
If successful, the rewards for the company and industry could be lucrative, she believes.
‘Recent estimates state that sea lice are responsible for at least €1.5 billion in costs and lost income for the salmon farming industry in Norway alone in 2019,’ said Olsen.
Blue Lice’s founders met just three years ago at a conference in Stavanger called X2-Labs, which focused on ‘the blue revolution in the ocean’.
‘There was a lot of research done in this field, but the research hadn’t been commercialised,’ said Olsen.
‘By linking the research with the market players, we developed a technology consisting of attractants which are known to attract sea lice. We conducted three field trials resulting in a proof of concept and three lab trials to fine tune the system.
‘We are now in a pre-commercialisation phase. Before settling the costs we will have a full-scale pilot test in 2020 to optimise the technology and make it user friendly.
‘In Q4 2020 we will know its real value for the customer, and price the system based on its value. We are now preparing for the last full-scale test at two sites with Ellingsen Seafood in Lofoten (Norway) throughout 2020.
Ambitious growth
‘We have set out an ambitious growth plan and target the first commercial sale towards the end of 2020 – set to reach 1,000 systems in 2024.’
A second company founded at the X2-Labs event, Fishency, is developing an automated sea lice counter: a tube with cameras and lights to replace the weekly manual counting of sea lice.
‘We need to work up front of the problem, on the preventive side,’ Fishency’s co-founder and CEO Flavie Gohin explained.
‘The key to controlling sea lice starts with proper monitoring so decisions for prevention or treatment can be taken in time. This is what Fishency focuses on.
‘Manual sea lice counting is labour intensive, represents clear downsides for fish health, and provides poor statistics on the actual sea lice level in the cages.
‘The lack of accurate sea lice data results in extensive treatments due to late decisions, where the tipping point is passed and the sea lice infection goes exponential. Methods to control and treat sea lice cause a reduced immune system response and, consequently, increase the mortality rate.’
Gohin added: ‘If sea lice levels are monitored daily, the farmers can treat earlier. This will reduce treatments in the long-term and hence reduce mortality, loss of growth, impact on the environment, and so on.
‘This is all value for money, in addition to saving the labour cost of manual counting, and the mortality from the fish being counted.
‘We will provide fish farmers with a decision making tool where the development of the number of sea lice at various stages will be monitored and reported daily.
‘Our data can easily be integrated in predictive technologies, where environmental data are combined with sea lice data to enable a forecast of sea lice level up to two to four weeks ahead.’
The tool Fishency has developed is a funnel deployed a few metres down in the cage, called Fishency360.
‘The funnel is equipped with a high resolution camera system and optimised lighting that offers a clear 360 degree view of the fish,’ said Gohin.
“The lack of accurate sea lice data results in extensive treatments due to late decisions”
‘The fish swim passively through and we scan the whole fish by collecting pictures from different angles. Our machine learning algorithms detect sea lice and other fish health parameters which are reported daily to the farmers.
‘Fishency360 logs the type of fish passing (regular, mature) and is deployed at different depths in order to ensure a good and representative fish population for the daily sea lice report.
‘Inside the funnel we are optimising the light conditions to be invariable at any depth at any time of the day throughout the year.
‘We are the only company on the market with a 360 degree solution. Our competitors only see one side of the fish and use statistics to calculate the lice count on the blind side.
‘We analyse hundreds of fish per day, while some competitors mention thousands of pictures of fish collected. However, most of our captured images have the quality required to visualise sea lice and perform a good analysis where other technologies might have challenges with light conditions.’
Since Fishency was founded in 2017, its smart funnel has successfully undergone two trials, and should reach the market this year.
Reliable statistics
‘Our previous tests confirmed that we have a sufficient number of fish passing through our Fishency360 to provide reliable statistics,’ said Gohin.
‘Fishency is deploying the first commercial unit in April this year. The fish farmers we are currently working with are in Norway. We are content with progress so far.
‘There are about 3,500 active pens in Norway, and Norway represents about 50 per cent of the global salmon production.
‘All the salmon producing countries have serious lice issues and are lacking systems to monitor the situation. Initial market focus will be Norway, but the Faroe Island and Scottish markets are on our agenda for the end of this year and 2021. Chile and Canada will follow for 2022 and 2023.’
More tools will be added to the system, she explained: ‘With sharp pictures of the whole surface of the fish, we are able to detect several fish health parameters like various deformations, ulcers, loss of scales, nose wounds etc. Digital weighing will be developed further this year.’
A second type of sea lice counter, a hyperspectral camera, has been developed by Ecotone, based in Trondheim.
‘Ecotone’s SpectraLice system is designed to count sea lice on freely swimming salmon in each cage and at all times (24/7),’ said Ecotone’s director and co-founder Ivar Erdal.
‘This gives the fish farmer a very detailed and real time overview of the sea lice situation, and hence they can act early and accurately when they see a negative trend in specific cages. This will give tremendous advantages over today’s method of weekly manual counting.
‘Ecotone has put emphasis into building a complete system: a camera in the water with complete image processing embedded in the unit, an instrument box which delivers power and transmits the resulting data to a dedicated database via 4G network, and a user interface in which all results from a sea farm are presented in an easy readable format and with export functions.
‘Ecotone uses a hyperspectral camera for detection of sea lice. A hyperspectral camera records and analyses reflected light, and the sea lice is identified through their spectral – or optical – signature rather than by shape and size as a standard RGB camera will have to rely on.
‘This makes our solution unique and gives a clear advantage with regard to positive identification of the sea lice.’
Quality control
Embedded in the SpectraLice camera there is also an RGB camera, which is used for quality control of images, light conditions, and water quality.
Erdal added: ‘We do not have a cost schedule for external use yet. Hyperspectral imaging is more expensive than traditional RGB cameras.
‘On the other hand, data from hyperspectral imaging are more efficient and accurate to process and gives much more information than RGB images. This will give more value for money to the end users.
‘Now we are in a piloting stage with two aquaculture companies, having several cameras placed in production cages. This includes development and testing of models for sea lice counting, practical testing of equipment and positioning in the cages.
‘The piloting stage will continue into 2020 until
we have concluded that the system is ready for commercial use.
‘The piloting trials are currently done only in Norway, with Lerøy Seafood Group and Måsøval Fiskeoppdrett.
‘Ecotone is now looking for more piloting companies which can increase the number of test locations- maybe this could be in Scotland?
‘The piloting phase has been very important and has given valuable feedback, which is being used to fine tune the system performance and operational settings.’
Erdal said the size of the sea lice counting market is equal to the number of sea pens in production.
‘This market is growing, as it is anticipated that the Norwegian salmon production will increase three to five times over the next 20 years.
‘Ecotone plans to take a major share of this market, being in the forefront of developing a fully automatic sea lice counting system.’
A third company developing a sea lice counter, Aquabyte, based in Silicon Valley and Norway, is also hoping to further exploit this lucrative market. Its solution involves ‘underwater stereoscopic cameras that determine fish health, size, and optimal feed quantity’.
Last year, Aquabyte founder Bryton Shang told Fish Farmer that the Norwegian authorities were going to give farmers – who must seek exemptions from manual lice counting - special dispensation to switch to automatic Aquabyte counting.
Hans Runshaug, Aquabyte’s general manager in Norway, said its device had been ‘tested and proven’ in Norway, where it was now ready for commercial use.
Aquabyte also plans to trial its technology at three mainland sites in Scotland soon. ‘We are already working with well-known companies in Norway, and Scotland is the next step.
‘The next step is commercial contracts with all the Scottish commercial farms. Scotland has the biggest aquaculture sector outside Norway in Europe. It is natural for us to go to Scotland.’
Last year, Vard Aqua announced that its NS Collector, a vacuum that filters sea lice from cages, was also ready for market.
Svein Arve Tronsgård, Vard Aqua’s sales and marketing manager, said: ‘The sea lice collector consists primarily of a pump, which filters large quantities of seawater through a special filter.
‘Once installed, inside or outside the cage, the submerged ‘vacuum cleaner’ continually collects lice at all stages of development—from larvae to mature lice.
‘As the sea lice collector is in service 24/7, it is a proactive tool in the fight against salmon lice. In a standard cage, 50m in diameter, there is approximately 10,000m3 of water in a top layer five metres thick.
‘The NS Collector filters 2,500m3 of seawater per hour, so in theory, it could go through the entire volume inside the louse skirt in four hours, removing both lice and other debris.
‘In locations where water replacement is limited due to louse skirts, algae removal and increased circulation are beneficial for both fish health in general and for gill health in particular. We have no doubts about its efficacy.’
“Ecotone is now looking for more piloting companies which can increase the test locationsmaybe this could be in Scotland?”