Machine vision and image analysis can enable the sorting of fish into “production”, “ordinary” and “superior” classes.

Today, fish are graded manually by employees who assess their shape, colour and any surface injuries to the fish. Consumers demand salmon fillets that are fresh and regular in colour and shape. This can be difficult to achieve using a manual approach.

Automation can increase productivity and raise processing rates while improving the consistency of classification. Norwegian science organisation SINTEF has supported an array of research projects related to automated processing of aquaculture product. Information about its automated fish processing capabilities can be found here.

In considering the future of aquaculture the work of Pål Lader from SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture (Norway) is a must read.

In an article entitled 2020: An Aquaculture Odyssey in Gemini Magazine Pål sketches out what the future of the aquaculture industry could look like.

Free-range farmed fish. Sea cages that sail off and deliver their fish by themselves. Large autonomous fish farms that float unmoored in the sea. This could be the aquaculture of the future, the article states in a well argued scenario of what the future could look like.

When not casting his mind forward to design the aquaculture systems of the future Pål is a researcher for Norwegian Science Agency SINTEF with expertise in understanding the load bearing capacity of various types of aquaculture structures.

A unique form of genetic fingerprinting for salmon is being used to:

• increase weight gain performance
• increase resistance to amoebic gill disease
• reduce the incidence of early maturation
• improved carcase characteristics

The fin-clipping exercise is unique among selective breeding programs worldwide. The tiny fin samples are used to ‘DNA fingerprint’ each fish and determine its family tree. Without this capability, the 140 salmon families produced each year would have to be kept in separate tanks until large enough to tag, an expensive exercise that would subject the families to different ‘nursery’ conditions, making it difficult to compare their performance.

Tiny fin samples are used to ‘DNA fingerprint’ each fish and determine its family tree. The Wayatinah tag team recorded a ten-fold difference in the weights of the young salmon. With 30–40 per cent of this variation attributable to genetic rather than environmental factors, this encouraging finding suggests great performance gains can be made by breeding from the best bloodlines.

Progeny from the breeding program will be provided by Saltas to Tasmanian salmon growers as smolt for commercial production, and to hatcheries as eggs and young fish (to smolt stage) for growing into broodstock.

Additional information about the program is available here.

I find that one of the most useful tools for helping to prioritise the most critical innovations is to start by looking at some of the major changes facing the industry.

Some of the main trends impacting on Aquaculture include:

• a shift from a production driven approach to a market driven approach with emphasis on the whole supply chain from producer to consumer
• increased globalisation resulting in greater competitive pressures, growing power of trans-national companies especially in food industry research, processing and marketing
• an exacting range of demands by consumers including product consistency, reliability of supply, food safety, product choice, and more recently, sustainability of production
• a revolution in technologies applied to aquaculture including genetic manipulation of plants and animals, precision farming and information management —this involves a trend to patented input systems
• the development of an industrialised system of aquaculture with increased vertical integration, a systems approach to aqua-industries and implementation of industry-wide quality assurance
• continuing increase in mechanisation and capital intensity
• concern for the environment, especially the issues of water quality and degradation, air quality and climate change
• reduction in the number of mainstream commercial farms, increasing farm size
• an increase in the ‘critical mass’ for aquaculture required to support up-to-date infrastructure, information systems, processing, reliable year-round supply capacity and marketing

We have written elsewhere about the objectives of the finfish.org effort.

Clearly, however, if we are going to be successful in overcoming the fish production gap, then we will need to connect with companies, organisations and individuals globally and have them recognise the value of participating in this. Connecting means actually mobilising then realising valuable outcomes as a result of independent entities world-wide pursuing distributed, collaborative and cumulative aquaculture innovation.

What might motivate such independent entities to contribute their permission, their attention and actually commit resources to this effort?

Part of the answer to this lies in the fact that we are using the approach of open innovation to conduct this effort. The concept of open innovation is logical, presents compelling prospects and its core concepts are widely accepted. However, beyond the few often quoted stories of US mega companies such as Procter & Gamble and Eli Lilly there does not appear to be great deal of publicly available, practical information about successful practice.

Perhaps this might help explain some of the doubts anxieties and confusion over what to do and how to do it? One can imagine the array of fears that might arise would include the usual concerns where collaboration is concerned:

• who else is involved?
• who owns what intellectual property?
• how can we avoid losing control?

However, the benefits that companies, organisations and individuals can gain by participating in this project are absolutely compelling. They include:

• access to free market, industry and technology information and research
• knowledge of benchmarks for the measurement of what constitutes ‘world class’ performance now and in the future for aquaculture products and services
• the opportunity to create new aquaculture knowledge with other highly capable individuals and entities that you would not normally meet
• the ability to engage in dialogues with important organisations concerning market, industry and technology issues
• practical learning by doing mastery of open innovation skills and capabilities
• defining and participating in valuable projects
• acquiring practical experience in open innovation that allows the gap to be closed between potential and actual value
• the opportunity to participate in a best of breed process that will inform the conduct of industry and corporate innovation practice into the future

This suite of benefits should be compelling to those individuals and organisations intent on being part of the aquaculture market in the future.

What’s your take on this? We’d welcome your thoughts as well as your involvement.

NORWEGIAN researchers in Bergen are investigating how climate change affects feed utilisation and growth in farmed salmon. Sea temperature is also said to be rising in other countries that farm Atlantic salmon in sea cages: Chile, USA, Tasmania and Ireland, meaning this is an international issue.

Salmon prefer temperatures below approximately 17C. Fish farmers have experienced that feed intake among salmon drops in such periods, the growth is reduced and the feed conversion ratio rises. In other words, they say the fish do not utilise feed as efficiently.

“In the research project, Salmon farming in warmer seawater, funded by the Research Council of Norway, we are aiming to identify how much fat and protein salmon use for growth and how much they use to maintain bodily functions when the sea is 19C. We also want to find out how higher sea temperatures affect feed conversion and feed factor,” says Ernst Morten Hevrøy, a researcher at the National Institute of Nutrition and Seafood Research (NIFES). The project is a collaboration between the Institute of Marine Research, Marine Harvest Norway, Nofima Akvaforsk/Fiskeriforskning AS, Skretting and NIFES.

“The goal is to come up with a feed whose combination of nutrients ensures the growth and wellbeing of salmon and efficient feed utilisation in warmer water. This is also important in order to ensure good fish health.”

One of the key factors that has driven the long term trend of increasing per capita fish intake across the globe is that fish consumption is promoted by nutritionists as a very important component of a healthy diet. Current thinking has targeted the Omega-3 fatty acid content of fish oils as a major contributor to the healthy diet aspects of fish eating.

Farmed fish require feed with specific protein and oil components in order to grow. Traditionally, the lion’s share of this has been derived from wild stocks of ‘feed fish’. However, even a cursory appreciation of the numbers and what we know about today’s feed conversion ratios make it apparent that it will not be sustainable to overcome the fish production gap using wild caught fish to feed farmed fish. Does the pressure on feed fish stocks mean that there is a prospect that Omega-3 fatty acids will disappear from farmed fish? Does this mean that a fundamental limiter exists that will prevent us from ever bridging the fish production gap?

Significant efforts are being made now to overcome this limiter with efforts being put into developing high protein grain-based replacements for feed fish (soy, lupins, etc). Genetically engineered plants which produce essential omega-3 fish oils could offer a new way of improving people’s diets, scientists working on an EU project said at a conference on ‘Incorporating Omega 3 in the food chain’. Long-chain fatty acids called eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), found mainly in oily fish such as salmon, mackerel and herring, provide protection against cardiovascular diseases, slow down mental decline in the elderly and are essential for the healthy development of a baby’s brain in the womb.

Whilst experts recommend a daily intake of 450mg of omega-3 fatty acids, most adults barely manage half that amount. Among teenagers, the figure drops to just 100mg a day, and intake in low-income families is around 50mg per day less than in other families.

There are no naturally occurring plant species that have the capacity to synthesise long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. EPA and DHA are normally made by microscopic marine algae which are then eaten by small fish, passing the fatty acids into the food chain. Research conducted as part of the Lipgene project took key genes from algae and inserted them into oil seed. The results show that the plants were able to synthesise omega-3 fatty acids in their seed oils.

These outcomes show promise that GM-enhanced plant sources may be suitable suppliers of both protein and Omega-3 oils in manufactured aquaculture feed and that a sustainable route to overcoming the fish gap is potentially feasible.

More information about the Lipgene Project is available here.

We provide more resources for identifying innovation components for significant aquaculture innovation. Some examples of relevant innovation components found from these sources may be reviewed here.

If you thought that China’s massive existing aquaculture capability might be likely to prove a threat to businesses from other regions seeking to gain markets for their produce, a recent article from the New York Times provides an interesting perspective.

Click here for access to the article.

By 2030 an additional 37 million tonnes of fish per year will be needed to maintain current levels of fish consumption for an expanded world population. Because traditional capture fisheries have reached their maximum production levels, fish farming represents the only way to fill the gap. But it will only do so if it is promoted and managed in a responsible fashion.

According to the FAO, for a quarter century, fish farming has been the world’s fastest growing food production sector, sustaining an annual growth rate of 8.8% since 1970. By way of comparison, livestock production, also considered a growth sector, increased at a rate of just 2.8% a year during the same period.

Today, some 45% of all fish consumed by humans — 48 millions tonnes in all — is raised on farms.

By 2030, the addition of 2 billion more people to the world population will mean that aquaculture will need to produce nearly double that, 85 million tonnes of fish per year, just to maintain current per capita consumption levels.

Citing these trends, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told a Rome meeting that further development of the aquaculture sector should be a priority for the international development agenda.

The full news item is available here.

The quality of a business opportunity is linked to a small number of factors. Amongst the most important of these is the size of the market opportunity.

Recently, the European Union Fisheries Commissioner, Joe Borg mapped out the future for aquaculture in the EU. In his address he quoted FAO data:

“With wild fish capture facing a number of severe constraints, aquaculture appears to be the only viable option to meet this growing demand. According to the FAO, global aquaculture production will have to double by 2030 to keep pace with the demand. This represents, in absolute terms, an increase of almost 40 million tons.”

Given this massive increase in demand there is a major opportunity for business to create the supply.

Mr Borg also noted that the EU itself represents a major export destination with current net imports of almost three million tons of seafood and, according to Eurostat forecasts, this figure is set to increase to 12 million tons by 2025.

Mr Borg went on to observe:

“There is also a widely-shared view that the EU aquaculture sector should develop by combining high volume products with niche production to satisfy more specific and high quality market demands.”

“We concur with this view. It is market and local prevailing conditions that will determine which type of production can withstand competition from imported products and can meet the needs of consumers and/or processors. Public authorities can help by providing an effective, fair and transparent legislative framework or guidelines for product differentiation, based on initiatives such as quality assurance schemes, regional branding, sustainability labelling or organic labelling. This can provide the added value that the sector needs. It can also help meet the challenge of competition coming from emerging economies with lower costs and standards.”

A full transcript of the Borg address is available here.