5 Ways IoT and AI Are Changing Fisheries and Aquaculture

Globally, wild fishing, sea, and land-based fish farms benefit from IoT technology and artificial intelligence. These technologies are helping to safeguard global food security, ensuring practices are economical and sustainable. Here are five ways that IoT is changing aquaculture.

Over Fishing

Guaranteeing the sustainability of our wild fish and seafood supplies is critical, and regulators now have data from satellite imagery, along with drone, onboard, or underwater IoT devices. This data can be collected and used to monitor catches, location of vessels and enforce sustainable fishing practices. Large fishing companies can use the same data to assist traceability and supply chain transparency. Ultimately helping the end consumer be more conscious when making purchasing decisions.

Precision Fishing

IoT devices and AI are helping to provide fisheries with insights to optimize where and when they fish, along with sensors that detect the fish and catch size and onboard cameras that assist with sorting the catch. The data can also help the wild fishing industry improve its operational costs, with insights to reduce fuel consumption and optimize the maintenance of fleets using AI predictive maintenance. McKinsey has reported that if large-scale fishing companies worldwide move to this model, they could decrease their annual operating costs by about $11 billion.

Health & Welfare

Ensuring the health and welfare of fish farms is essential, as a drop in the water quality or a disease outbreak (such as fish lice) can be catastrophic. Early detection can help farmers intervene before an outbreak occurs and improve fish welfare. IoT sensors can provide data on fish behavior, water conditions, and physiology to smart fish farms, which can produce AI models for the early detection of less than adequate conditions.

Feeding Optimization

With feed taking up a large proportion of operating costs and under and overfeeding having a negative impact on fish health and size plus the water quality, the optimization of feeding can lead to significant savings and advantages. Many smart fish farms use feeders that rely on vibration and acoustic signals, such as efishery, which helps with more accurate feeding. The use of technology in aquaculture management is also improving efficiencies, reducing the demands on manpower, which for remote sea farms is a high cost and safety benefit.  

Harvest Optimization

Using data to model the reproduction, growth, and maturation of a species combined with live data can help optimize rearing and help farmers plan for the optimum harvesting time. Complex models can be created to plan to harvest based on the size of the fish, predicted mortality, and the current market price to help get a premium return.

The convergence of IoT technology and artificial intelligence is helping both the fisheries and aquaculture industries on an operational level to become more sustainable and efficient. As more and more companies adopt technology and scale advanced analytics and AI internally, we’ll see a smarter, more resilient industry emerge, one that can help bring stability to world food supplies.