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Medicine Technology

Salmon Farmers Are Scanning Fish Faces To Fight Killer Lice (bloomberg.com) 106

Posted by BeauHD from the what-will-they-think-of-next dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Millions of Atlantic salmon could have their faces stored in digital databases to track their health and single out those posing threats to their marine surroundings. And before you ask if fish have faces, they do: A company in Norway has developed a 3D scanner that can tell salmon apart based on the distinct pattern of spots around their eyes, mouth and gills. Fish-farming giant Cermaq Group AS wants to roll out the technology at salmon pens along Norway's fjord-etched coastline, betting it can prevent the spread of epidemics like sea lice that infect hundreds of millions of farmed fish and cost the global industry upwards of $1 billion each year.

Cargill wants to apply facial recognition to aqua farms, and Cermaq, operator of over 200 salmon and trout farms in Norway, Canada and Chile, is already doing tests on the iFarm design with its Norwegian technology partner BioSort AS. It'll look a lot like existing fish farms, with networks of 160-meter (525-foot) circular nets that are typically 35 meters deep and home to up to 200,000 salmon. The difference is that iFarms would be equipped with camera scanners at the water surface. On any given day, about 40,000 salmon in each pen will rise to above water for a gulp of air, something their bladders need to regulate buoyancy. Each time a salmon does this, typically every four days, it would go through a funnel fitted with sensors that would screen its face and body so records can be kept on each fish. If the machines pick up on abnormalities like lice or skin ulcers, the infected fish can be quarantined for medical treatment.
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Salmon Farmers Are Scanning Fish Faces To Fight Killer Lice More

Salmon Farmers Are Scanning Fish Faces To Fight Killer Lice

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  • Ah, an item to add to the list of things that I'd just as soon not know existed ... "sea lice". (shudder)

  • Millions of Atlantic salmon could have their faces stored in digital databases to track their health and single out those posing threats to their marine surroundings.

    That's what they say but this is obviously an anti-muslim fish ban. Or even worse some kind of fish-racism to keep the fish-line "pure". Where have I heard that before... snort.

  • You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.

    • It would seem to be true with all those salmon in the way, but if you don't catch anything, aren't you still fishing?

  • A win for sustainability (Score:3)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Tuesday October 09, 2018 @08:46AM (#57450414)

    Fish farming is not only more sustainable than hunting at sea, but in the long run tech like this makes farmed fish safer fish.

    • A few years ago, farmed salmon was about $5/lb, while wild-caught salmon was around $10/lb. Last year, the price of farmed salmon started rising precipitously. By the end of the year it was all the way up to $9/lb. I did a little research into why, and it's because of disease and parasite problems they're having in salmon farms killing off a lot of their fish.

      The difference is a catfish or trout farm is entirely landlocked. They dig a bunch of trenches on land, fill them with water, and raise the fis

      • Wild-caught trout in cold mountain rivers often have pink flesh though. It seems to be the natural color of the meat when the fish get a high quality varied diet, and the grey color is only from commercially farmed fish. "For whatever reason."

  • Face recognition?

    They check for lice and if yes, they retrieve the fish.

    But knowing it was Fishy McFishface27623 who had lice isn't useful as far as I can see from the article.

    • My guess is then they can tell later on if Fishy McFishface27623 was able to be cured of the lice after treatment. Or maybe they use it for identity theft and open up credit cards.

  • "Quarantined for medical treatement" (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday October 09, 2018 @08:50AM (#57450426)

    Sounds so nice and friendly and helpful! What utter liar wrote this? Of course, a salmon will just be killed if sick and disposed off.

    • That isn't true. Half of salmon farms have this infestation. They aren't going to throw away their stock. That would be financial disaster. They use chemicals to treat the salmon and sequester them.
      • That is very debatable. Not the infestation rates - that's about right. But the use of chemicals to treat the infected fish.

        The problem is that the tanks are open to seawater. They kind-of have to be - to make use of the oxygenation and waste consumption services of large areas of ocean surface and seabed without paying for those services. That's the entire economic basis of fish farming, after all. So, if they treat the fish in the main tank (see footnote), then inevitably some of the treating chemical wi

  • And before you ask if fish have faces, they do:

    If you've ever been to an authentic Chinese restaurant you'd already know this. Of course, most Americans think fish are only fillets or breaded sticks.

  • Never mind scanning the fishes' faces, just burn the parasites off with a laser, as shown below.

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/licehunting-underwater-drone-protects-salmon-with-lasers

  • A cylinder with a diameter of 160m and 35m depth for 200k salmon? If I could correctly, that leaves 80 liters of water per fish, and those are big fishes. It sounds insane.

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