1) You can produce a lot of high quality protein.
2) Aquaculture reduces (somewhat) the pressure to overfish.
The industry is here and it is going to grow so we might as well do it as safely and efficiently as we can.
From Nanalyze, some ideas on how to keep watch on the fishies:
The Benefits of Aquaculture with IoT Technology
Earlier this year, we took our underpaid MBAs on a field trip. We don’t do any of that team-building, touchy feely stuff where you fall into each other’s arms or go to a ballgame where they charge $10 for watered-down beer. Nope. We wild-harvested shellfish—clams, oysters and mussels—straight from the beach. Why? Well, we can’t afford a catered seafood buffet for one thing. And there’s no better way to build esprit de corps than digging into a barnacle-encrusted oyster shell with a blunted tool to extract slimy, salty flesh. It turns out not everyone is a frugal hunter-gatherer like us, so fish farming is big business. Where there’s money, there will be a tech entrepreneur with a solution. In this article, we’ll talk about how startups are bringing Internet of Things technology to improve the benefits of aquaculture. Finally, a topic we can really dive into....MORE
Aquaculture involves the breeding, rearing and harvesting of animals and plants in both fresh and salt water environments, mainly for food and to be used as props in Red Lobster commercials. Globally, aquaculture supplies more than 50 percent of all seafood produced for human consumption, according to NOAA, which estimated the value of the market at about $160 billion back in 2014. And, if you believe the random market reports generated by unemployable MBAs, the aquaculture industry will be worth north of $200 billion by the next decade. Meanwhile, seafood and aquaculture tech startups reeled in $193 million in 2016, a 271% increase on the $52 million raised across both 2014 and 2015, according to AgFunder News. It’s only a matter of time before we pull the last bluefin tuna out of the ocean, so we’ll once again need technology to save the day.
Benefits of Aquaculture with IoT Technology
Enter IoT companies and startups that are using or developing technologies that pull in data, from smart sensors to satellites, that can be crunched using various cloud-based analytic software tools, including artificial intelligence, to make aquaculture operations more efficient and even eco-friendly. For example, mega-corporation Cargill announced earlier this year that it would release a predictive software platform called iQShrimp that uses machine learning and sensors to give farmers insight into their operation. The platform collects data on shrimp size, water quality, feeding patterns and weather conditions using mobile devices, sensors and automated feeders. Combined with other data, the algorithms go to work to provide recommendations such as feeding management strategies and optimal harvest dates.
Currently, Cargill is a big fish in a small pond. But here are some startups that hope they can survive the upstream battle.
Predicting Environmental Changes with Iot Technology
Founded in 2014, The Yield is an Australian company that has raised $11.5 million in investments since 2015, including a $6.5 million Series A last year that included power toolmaker Bosch. The company’s Sensing+Aqua IoT platform is mainly used in Australia’s oyster farming industry. Sensors collect a number of important climate conditions including salinity, water temperature and depth, barometric pressure and sea-tide height. The data is transferred to The Yield’s Microsoft-based cloud platform, where AI and other analytical software converts it into three-day predictions about local weather and harvesting conditions.
Such hyper-local information is particularly useful for oysters farmers who are often forced to shut down harvest areas due to heavy rains that can wash contaminants into bays. However, those decisions are typically based on monitoring rain gauges from public weather stations that could be many kilometres away, resulting in financial losses of between $20,000 and $100,000 a day depending on the season. The Yield says its predictive IoT system can reduce unnecessary harvest closures by 30 percent. That’ll at least buy you a baker’s dozen of freshly shucked oysters.
Counting Fish Using IoT Technology
Founded in 2009, Canadian aquatech company XpertSea Solutions has raised about $8.8 million, including about $7.5 million in April. Investors included Aqua Spark, one of the few investment firms to focus on aquaculture exclusively. If you thought counting sheep could put you asleep, try counting fish larvae. That’s what the company’s high-tech XperCount bucket does for hatcheries and fish farms trying to better control inventory. Employing AI and computer vision to count and size organisms such as shrimp larvae, XperCount is an IoT-enabled device that connects to a portal where customers can access data and analytics....
