Artificial intelligence (AI) has many applications for the aquaculture industry that can bring greater efficiencies and insights, as well as investor

‘AI ticks all the boxes’ and is proving to be a perfect match for aquaculture

The following is an excerpt from an article published by Global Seafood Council:

As aquaculture tries to meet growing global demand for seafood, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) is increasing in a variety of spheres, making ripples throughout the industry and promising to deliver greater efficiencies and insights into fish farming.

“Across the board, AI ticks all the boxes for a high-growth area for investors right now,” says Nathan Pyne Carter, CEO of Ace Aquatec. “The reason aquaculture is such a hot space for investors is because they’re seeing how much potential AI has in the field. To ensure aquaculture is growing in an ethically, responsible way, you need intelligent systems to deliver transparency in the supply chain, to monitor water conditions and to ensure you’re not wasting feed or causing stress to your fish. Monitoring all this in a way that’s not labor-intensive on the people side makes sense, and that’s where AI comes in.”

Scotland-based Ace Aquatec recently launched a humane seal-deterrent system that uses AI to distinguish between different species and to activate a reaction-specific trigger based on how wildlife is behaving around a farm. The company’s AI-enabled cameras distinguish seals from porpoises and whales and target its Acoustic Startle Response and Electric Startle Response deterrents to a specific predator. Sound deterrents are tailored to the hearing sensitivity of that species, and programmable, randomized pulses are emitted when the response is triggered.

“That’s more effective than having an acoustic or electric field on all the time, that the animals can habituate to. It allows us to only respond when we need to,” Pyne-Carter said. The goal is to create a conditioning response that causes no injury to predators but instead deters them from approaching fish pens.

“We’re looking for ways to create a learning event in the seal or sea lion, one that creates a shock and flight response,” he said. “We’ve tackled it from two modalities, acoustic and electric, but both create the same reaction within a few milliseconds. As fish farming has expanded into the ocean and we’re building up farms to meet the growing needs of the population, seals and sea lions start to see an easy meal in the fish cages. So we’re trying to encourage them back to their natural behaviors of chasing wild fish rather than predating on the farms.”

Left: AI cameras used by Ace Aquatec to determine physical characteristics of nearby marine mammals and potential predators. At right is a thermal image of a seal taken by the camera. Images courtesy of Ace Aquatec.

There’s potential for this system to detect other predators, such as otters predating on trout farms, birds, or even humans, in the future.

“In Chile, aquaculture farmers have to be careful of people stealing fish at night,” Pyne-Carter said. “In Scotland, we focus on marine mammals and have trained ourselves on seals, porpoises and whales, but our AI training program requires only 200 images of each animal we’re interested in. So our wildlife cameras could deliver warnings about other animals, birds, people or boats fairly easily. Whatever we do, we want to make sure it’s ethically and environmentally responsible, done in a way that respects the habitats of animals local to the area.” 

Seal predation also costs the salmon sector dearly: According to Salmon Scotland, one million fish were eaten by seals from 2020-21, costing the industry there £12 million a year in losses.

In Norway, Cermaq, BioSort and ScaleAQ are working on iFarm, a sensor containing multiple cameras that uses AI to recognize individual fish in a pen and capture small details like a salmon’s dot pattern and the number of sea lice on a fish. The companies are testing different designs and set-ups in what will be a five-year development period. “It’s a very complex system that requires sophisticated interaction between farming equipment, machine vision and fish behavior,” said Karl Fredrik Ottem, Cermaq’s iFarm project manager.

“But assuming our trials are successful, this will give farmers access to a technology that can improve overall fish welfare, provide protection against sea lice, and greatly reduce mortality. It will allow the salmon farming industry to shift from stock-based aquaculture to individualized follow-up and care, which will have a huge impact on fish health and welfare and will also reduce the footprint of farming.” (continues...)

Author/Source: Lauren Kramer / Global Seafood Alliance | Read the full article by clicking the link here

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