SmartCages

Aquaculture constitutes one of the action modules of the European common fisheries policy, for which a specific development strategy has been designed aiming to increase and optimize production. Thus, it is important to develop actions to improve fish welfare and aquaculture practices.

Our objective is the development of innovative methodologies and new systems that will optimize feeding practices, monitor the behavior of the fish and detect early disease signs. These systems can be incorporated and used by the aquaculture industry to improve the welfare of aquaculture fish species and optimize management practices in aquaculture sites.The current project will develop an automated and innovative way to remotely monitor and analyze fish states by means of information technology that will result in the optimization of aquaculture practices.

It is expected that the developed systems will result in improvements in the husbandry practice in cage farming:

high precision in fish growth parameters through automated monitoring
reduction of cost, adaptive and optimized design of feeding practices through feed loss monitoring and detection
improved farming conditions through early detection of abnormal behavior
innovative tools for monitoring health status

Echosounders and cameras are used for biomass estimation and long term monitoring of the production cage
Submerged stereo IP cameras are used for the estimation of fish body size
Submerged IP cameras are used for estimating feed loss and fish behaviour
Hyperspectral sensors are used to develop tools for health monitoring and early detection of disease.