Adapting existing technologies to improve seafood production and feed a hungry world

Expansion of aquaculture production depends crucially on the development of technologies that are able to add uncrewed management capabilities to fish farming operations, i.e., the ability to control the tank’s population remotely and without human presence. The present project aims to expand our successful Phase I feasibility research toward commercializing an autonomous device that can be inserted into established aquaculture workflows. The result will be a flexible, and adaptable, automated system that permits the sorting and handling of fish based on selected phenotypic characteristics of interest, including growth rates/condition, health status, skin abnormalities, parasitic load, morphological features, or behavior. This system will enhance productivity by reducing stress and injury from human handling, and increase the quality and quantity of the product raised in intensive cultivation. Results of our Phase I feasibility confirm that the time for autonomous methods, uncrewed devices, and AI-assisted robotics in aquaculture is now.