Innovasea adds AI biomass estimation to its suite of Atlantic salmon tools

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based Innovasea – a company developing tech solutions for aquaculture and fish tracking – has added AI-based biomass estimation for Atlantic salmon to its suite of aquaculture solutions.

The company announced that its biomass cameras can now use BiomassPro, an AI-driven solution that enables users to estimate the size and weight of fish stocks inside net pens in real-time. The data, Innovasea said, allows farmers to optimize production and reduce feeding costs. 

“The technology behind BiomassPro continues to perform well in the field, which is exciting,” Innovasea Vice President of Engineering Rafael Cordero said. “Customers have been asking for some time when it would be available for Atlantic salmon, but we wanted to take time to fine-tune the algorithm and ensure we were bringing a quality product to the marketplace.”

The company said it performed field trials of the new AI-driven tool at Atlantic salmon farms in British Columbia, Canada, and found that the software, coupled with camera coverage, is “highly effective” at estimating the size and weight of the species in real-time. 

The tool has already been in use for other farmed finfish species. Innovasea said BiomassPro is currently in use at farms in Canada, Chile, New Zeland, the U.S., Mexico, Central America, and the Mediterranean region and is now available for six species – Atlantic salmon, cobia, king salmon, red snapper, totoaba, and yellowtail.

In May, Innovasea announced that Creative Salmon in Tofino, B.C. – a farmer of organic king salmon around Vancouver Island, B.C. – is using the company’s BiomassPro technology. Following a six-month pilot, Creative Salmon found the AI tool was 99.7 percent accurate when compared to actual harvest data.

“BiomassPro has performed incredibly well for Creative Salmon in providing spot-on biomass estimations over the last 12 months,” Cordero said. “The numbers they’ve seen from their actual harvests are almost identical to what BiomassPro projected. That’s invaluable for a fish farm in terms of tracking growth curves, planning feeding operations, and knowing the ideal time to harvest.” 

The expanded AI tool adds to the list of products the company has debuted this year, which includes the “FlowFeeder” waterborne aquaculture feeding solution.  

Photo courtesy of Innovasea