50 Developments
An orbit view on shrimp farms Y
oung Norwegian graduates in microelectronics and space physics, Hogne Andersen and Mats F. Heigre founded their Bergen based startup Dynaspace in August 2018 to simplify space mission using nano satellites. In August 2019, they found a niche demand for real time global information on shrimp farming. With the InsightSPHERE cloud-based platform, the team uses multispectral satellite image processing capabilities, computer vision, proprietary machine learning algorithms to detect shrimp farms and monitor their activity in real-time, year-round. The information on current productivity (tonnes/ha), pond activity, disease outbreaks, tracking of production cycles and production forecasts can be at the local to global scale. Both Hogne and Mats were attending the Hatch Blue mentorship program in Singapore. As an example of the capabilities of their platform, they presented a InsightSPHERE Snapshot of ponds in Bilimora, India. The details include the hectarage, the number of ponds, active and inactive; number of extensive and intensive ponds and treatment ponds and via various steps, calculated the productivity of the area.
Dynaspace pitching at Hatch Blue’s Demo Day 2019 in Singapore.
“We have just started looking into the potential of using our technology in shrimp aquaculture after attending this Hatch Blue mentor program. Here we have learnt that the shrimp aquaculture industry requires more transparency and we hope that our innovation will bring key production data for this industry. The levels of information that we can provide will also depend on frequency and on the resolution of imaging data that we need and can get,” said Hogne. “We are still on the learning curve with shrimp farming, but we know that there are areas where we can use our expertise and provide more detail information such as on the geographical carrying capacity, changes in water quality or disease outbreaks. Such information may be useful for governments to regulate industry or for industry itself to self-regulate. In addition, there may be the need to calibrate our findings with ground information,” added Mats. With regards to monetisation, Hogne said, “We have a subscriptionbased model where clients get the snapshots on activity in specific areas of shrimp farming. Our capability is dynamic information from satellite imagery every 5 days or less if required. We have talked to many stakeholders and there is interest for such information on shrimp activity from shrimp traders, processors, feed mills, large integrators and even farmers,” said Hogne. https://dynaspace.no
Hogne Andersen and Mats F. Heigre were in Singapore attending Hatch Blue’s 2019 mentor program for new start-ups – here visiting shrimp farms in Indonesia during the program.
A Snapshot of Bilimora in India, 14th November 2019, demonstrating the power of the InsightSPHERE platform.
January/February 2020 AQUA Culture Asia Pacific