Photonis’s Underwater Imaging for Sustainable Aquaculture
The human population is continuously growing. Therefore the demand for food, including seafood has increased as well. To prevent oceans from being over-fished and other damage to aquatic ecosystems, companies are exploring new ways of obtaining seafood. New technology-driven solutions (called aquaculture) have enabled growing food in coastal marine waters and in the open ocean.
Aquaculture (also known as fish farming) is the controlled process of cultivating aquatic organisms, such as fish, crustaceans, and mollusks, especially for human consumption. Continuing advances in this process enable the development of aquaculture worldwide in coastal ocean waters, freshwater ponds and rivers, and even on land in tanks.
Challenges within aquaculture
One of the biggest challenges within aquaculture is the daily visual inspection of the fish and the net. Frequent monitoring is necessary to control the quality as well as the biodiversity around fish farms. These farms are often based in locations with a weak current, where fish live close together. This combination of factors increases the possibility of parasites, bacterial growth, and diseases. These risks could affect not only the fish in the farm itself, but also the fish that live nearby naturally. Also any holes developing in the nets surrounding the farms may cause a loss of production. For these reasons, aquaculture farms need systems that provide close monitoring.
Low light imaging for safe and healthy fish farms
Low light imaging offers a perfect solution for managers and fish farm owners to ensure safe, healthy, and sustainable fish farms. The majority of fish farms are located underwater and in low light conditions, because of their distance from the coast. In these conditions conventional cameras cannot capture clear images to provide owners and managers with actionable analytical data. Additional lighting can be used during inspection, but must be limited to not disturb the fish or provide snowy images due to lighted, floating particles. Low-light sensitive digital cameras can be used to check the health of the fish and the nets, monitor feeding, and in combination with a robot even enable cleaning of the nets without the need for additional lighting.
Photonis’s Nocturn provides the best aquaculture images
The low-light Nocturn camera from Photonis is a sensitive and compact camera core that fits the requirements or monitoring fish feeding and behavior, as well as net inspection. The rugged camera core performs extremely well in passive operation within low-light conditions. This eliminates the need for additional lighting under the water. The small, compact, and light-weight characteristics make this camera core versatile, enabling integration into a camera housing for immersion in seawater. In addition, the CMOS-based sensor technology allows high-speed capturing of up to 100 fps at the full frame mode. This technology enables detection of the fast movement of the fish. (The image shown above shows a rope 70 m under water.)
Customized camera cores
The Photonis R&D team offers the capability to customize camera cores to the most stringent requirements.
To request more information or a quotation for Photonis products, contact IL Photonics.