NEWHORIZONS
Focusing on Fisheries Development
HIGH HOPES AS IFARM VERSION 3 GETS UNDERWAY
Photo Credit: BioSort AS
Cermaq, BioSort and Scale AQ’s third version of iFarm has been installed in Norway. This small step could become a giant leap for salmon farming if the technology proves successful, writes Bonnie Waycott
Facial recognition tools are used in criminal investigations or when tagging people on social media, but over the past few years, they have also been appearing in aquaculture. In January 2020, Norwegian fish farmer Cermaq and the technology firms BioSort with support from ScaleAQ formally launched the first version of iFarm, a system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in facial recognition software to improve the management and oversight of salmon farming. Three years on, and iFarm’s third version has been installed in pens at Hellarvika, a Cermaq farm in Steigen. Version Three will mostly focus on sensors, data collection, machine learning, and further development of the fish sorting mechanism. Sensors will retrieve high-quality images and follow up key parameters such as fish ID, lice, growth and welfare. Most salmon farms currently assess the health of their fish as a group. If some are found to have lice, diseases or parasites, the whole farm is treated. But the iFarm system aims to assess each individual fish for growth, sea lice, disease, lesions and other factors that affect health and welfare. This allows farmers to determine how fast each fish grows and check for any problems. Each iFarm pen contains around 150,000 salmon. Around every four days, they come to the surface and take a gulp of air to regulate their swim bladders. When they do this, they are guided through a sensor arrangement where cameras can recognise and monitor them individually before recording data on them based on their unique
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8 iFarm Version 3 has been installed in pens at Hellarvika, a Cermaq farm in Steige
markings and structure. Any sick individual can then be treated, stopping or limiting the spread of disease and dramatically reducing the extent of treatment and associated costs as it no longer becomes necessary to treat an entire farm. “Sea lice and mortality are two important challenges that iFarm has been aiming to address over the past few years, along with building a history or health record for each individual fish so that they can be monitored and sorted according to their conditions,” BioSort Managing Director Geir Stang Hauge told WF. “Fish that have sea lice will be sent to a treatment unit, while those with skin lesions are handled according to their needs. The most unique feature of iFarm is the ability to remove individuals from a pen for a particular treatment. One of the core things with iFarm is helping farmers to be more targeted in their treatment approach and this emphasis on the individual plays a huge role.” Step-by-step learning The main focus of Versions One and Two were understanding how iFarm affects fish behaviour, perfecting system construction, ensuring that the fish are well and have good welfare, and testing two versions of the sensor housing and cameras. This offered insights into camera arrangement, lighting and data processing to create health records for each fish. First and second-generation sensor arrangements and camera units were also tested to collect statistics for lice growth and get the best possible images. This involved
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