Transforming technology
Cutting edge companies have the potential to transform the aquaculture sector
INNOVATION has always been a feature of the aquaculture industry, as it is with any new and fast developing sector. Every issue of Fish Farmer brings news of fish farmers’, scientists’ and suppliers’ ingenuity and inventiveness in addressing challenges, and this month we have a special focus on start-up companies and the novel concepts, ideas and products they are pioneering.
Last month, the Aquaculture Innovation Europe conference returned to London for the third year running, providing a platform for fledgling firms to pitch their innovations to investors and industry representatives.We bring highlights of that gathering over the next few pages.
Some of the most exciting advances in aquaculture are emerging from where the cutting edge technology of computer vison and machine learning is applied to existing farm practices, particularly in the farming of high value species such as salmon.
Few start-ups have made quite such an immediate impact in this space as Aquabyte, which has combined Silicon Valley brilliance with Norwegian expertise to help control sea lice on salmon farms.
Aquabyte has devised sea lice counting and biomass estimation software that has been deployed on salmon farms - including one of the major players - (and a trout farm) throughout Norway since the beginning of the year.
The automated system replaces manual sea lice counts, using underwater stereoscopic cameras inside the pens.
Through novel algorithms, the software is able to detect not just the lice levels, but the weight of a group of fish within 0.6 per cent of the true weight.
‘Over time, our platform will include other types of algorithms to determine the appetite of the fish, behavioural detection, being able to uniquely identify each individual in a pen and do that on the same hardware,’ said Aquabyte’s founder and CEO, Bryton Shang, in a presentation at AquaVision in Stavanger last year.
‘The idea is to eventually be able to use this data for feed optimisation…feed manufacturers will be able to give their customers feeding algorithms to tell them how to optimally use and feed the fish.’
But the initial target is sea lice, and the company is now turning its attention to other salmon producing countries, including Chile and Scotland.
Shang was in Scotland at the beginning of October, meeting investors, aquaculture suppliers, farmers and government agencies to explore the market here for his sea lice counting technology.
He met members of the Scottish government at Aqua Nor in August and they encouraged him to visit the sector in Scotland.
‘In Norway, they have prescribed very specifically how you have to do the [sea lice] counting. Scotland is a bit less specific but eventually they will have to go through the same process….and counting will have to be scientifically valid,’ he told Fish Farmer.
Farmers in Norway wishing to use Aquabyte must apply to the Norwegian Food Safety Authority first to seek exemptions from manual counting, but Shang said there is a dispensation pending from the Norwegian government for Aquabyte to completely replace manual sea lice counts on farms with the system.
He said he is sharing work he has done with the Norwegian authorities with their counterparts in Scotland. His aim is to make it easier for farmers – but it will probably be next year before Scottish producers get to run a pilot.
For the camera hardware,Aquabyte has partnered with Norwegian group Imenco, which has a UK base in Wick.
The system has been released on a commercial basis, with farms typically introducing cameras into each cage.
‘We’re just using a regular camera – they need to be waterproof, of course, which is what makes it expensive for now – but the value is in the software that is analysing the images,’ said Shang.
The hope is eventually to have vast production and get the cost of the camera so cheap that farmers can have them in each cage, even in Chile, where sites can have 30 cages.
Shang said they are looking to equip another six to eight farms in Norway this year, but there is currently a limited number of cameras available, so the farms will have one to two cameras each, to trial.
‘At this point, we just want to get everyone trying it, and then once they like it they can come back.’
The technology is easy to use, as the system does everything itself.The farmers just have to look at the website to access the information.
Future applications could include fish health monitoring (to measure wounds, scale loss, deformities), mort collection, and de-licing treatments - companies have approached him already for an offline version of the lice counter so they can determine efficacy before and after, said Shang.
‘A lot of other equipment suppliers have been interested in building machinery technology and they’ve all been coming to us.’
RAS farmers have shown interest, too, particularly in weight estimation because if they feed too much, it affects the water quality.
“What the investors have seen of the industry was very compelling them” to
And future markets could include the offshore concepts and ‘pods’ being trialled in Norway, which will need even more automation, not less, because they are unmanned, said Shang.
‘It’s a camera and you can put the camera in every type of cage and do all the monitoring you need to do.
‘It’s amazing and the technology has only come out in the last couple of years, with [for example] self-driving cars.’
Aquabyte secured additional $10 million funding in June this year, co-led by existing investors Costanoa Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.
Princeton educated Shang said: ‘Aquaculture in the US is not as developed as it is here or in Norway, but the progress in a short amount of time and what the investors have seen of the industry was very compelling to them.’
The new finance will help expansion into other markets and species.The company has two bases, in San Francisco, where the computer vision and machine learning researchers are more easily recruited, and in Bergen, the global centre of salmon farming.
Having two centres provides ‘the best of both worlds’ – for some fish farmers it is important to have a local presence, Shang believes, with sales people who speak Norwegian.
Companies in Silicon Valley are drawn to the sector because they ‘think it’s really cool’ to work in food sustainability and they want to engage with something different.
There are 35 people on the team, including sales professionals with knowledge of the market, and ‘customer success’ managers, whose job is to make sure everyone is happy, a crucial link (adopted from Silicon Valley) in the chain, said Shang.
There are new offices in Bergen, and he has just brought on board seasoned aquaculture leader Hans Runshaug as his general manager in Norway.
From Scotland, Shang – who divides his time between Norway and the US – is flying to Chile to see industry representatives there.
‘The success we’ve achieved in just two years has surpassed our expectations,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t be happier with the difference our technology is already making at the fish farms where it is in use and the enthusiastic support of the farmers and the Norwegian government.’