Counter attack need for treatment. ‘The solution also aims to improve fish welfare by less handling of the fish, while increasing the quality and production rate for farmed salmon. ‘The system is also user friendly and will not recquire a lot of handling from the fish farmer on site. It will be a passive system working continuously on the farm.’ If successful, the rewards for the company and industry could be lucrative, she believes. ‘Recent estimates state that sea lice are responsible for at least €1.5 billion in costs and lost income for the salmon farming industry in Norway alone in 2019,’ said Olsen. Blue Lice’s founders met just three years ago at a conference in Stavanger called X2-Labs, which focused on ‘the blue revolution in the ocean’. ‘There was a lot of research done in this field, but the research hadn’t been commercialised,’ said Olsen. ‘By linking the research with the market players, we developed a technology consisting of attractants which are known to attract sea lice. We conducted three field trials resulting in a proof of concept and three lab trials to fine tune the system. ‘We are now in a pre-commercialisation phase. Before settling the costs we will have a full-scale pilot test in 2020 to optimise the technology and make it user friendly. ‘In Q4 2020 we will know its real value for the customer, and price the system based on its value. We are now preparing for the last full-scale test at two sites with Ellingsen Seafood in Lofoten (Norway) throughout 2020. Ambitious growth ‘We have set out an ambitious growth plan and target the first commercial sale towards the end of 2020 – set to reach 1,000 systems in 2024.’ A second company founded at the X2-Labs event, Fishency, is developing an automated sea lice counter: a tube with cameras and lights to replace the weekly manual counting of sea lice. ‘We need to work up front of the problem, on the preventive side,’ Fishency’s co-founder and CEO Flavie Gohin explained. ‘The key to controlling sea lice starts with proper monitoring so decisions for prevention or treatment can be taken in time. This is what Fishency focuses on. ‘Manual sea lice counting is labour intensive, represents clear downsides for fish health, and provides poor statistics on the actual sea lice level in the cages. ‘The lack of accurate sea lice data results in extensive treatments due to late decisions, where the tipping point is passed and the sea lice infection goes exponential. Methods to control and treat sea lice cause a reduced immune system response and, consequently, increase the mortality rate.’ Gohin added: ‘If sea lice levels are monitored daily, the farmers can treat earlier. This will reduce treatments in the long-term and hence reduce mortality, loss of growth, impact on the environment, and so on. ‘This is all value for money, in addition to saving the labour cost of manual counting, and the mortality from the fish being counted.
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‘We will provide fish farmers with a decision making tool where the development of the number of sea lice at various stages will be monitored and reported daily. ‘Our data can easily be integrated in predictive technologies, where environmental data are combined with sea lice data to enable a forecast of sea lice level up to two to four weeks ahead.’ The tool Fishency has developed is a funnel deployed a few metres down in the cage, called Fishency360. ‘The funnel is equipped with a high resolution camera system and optimised lighting that offers a clear 360 degree view of the fish,’ said Gohin.
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