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Detailed Selling Lead Description
Subject: Innovation Award finalists: OptoScale
Message:
Accurate biomass measuring is a prerequisite for both profitability and
sustainability in aquaculture. OptoScale is nominated to the Innovation Award
for its work on laser lights, advanced algorithms and a simple, but brilliant idea
about how the weight of salmon can be measured more accurately.
In this series of articles, Aqua Nor wishes to present the three finalists for the
Innovation Award 2017. The first nominee in the series is OptoScale of
Trondheim.
New ways of measuring biomass, or average weight estimation of the salmon in
the cage, is ubiquitous in the industry. OptoScale distinct themselves from the
crowd – and much of the reason lies with the way they can distinguish individual
fish from the population in the cage.
Laser precision
OptoScale, like many others working with biomass measurement, uses a stereo
camera – i.e. two cameras that have slightly different field of view. By having
two slightly different pictures of the fish, one gets a better depth of vision and of
the circumference of the fish. In addition, OptoScale uses a laser beam which is
sent out in a striped pattern, rather than the traditional LED light.
Striped light
By lighting the fish with a striped pattern, one gets much more information than
when using the traditional lighting, since the curves of the light stripes change
with the fish’s circumference. In addition, the stripes will change even more if
they hit a fish that is in front of or behind the fish that is being measured – in this
way one is able to separate out individual fish from the population in the cage.
Biomass measurement as decision support
Sven Kolstø is co-founder and CEO of OptoScale. He points out that precision
in biomass measuring has great advantages, in addition to the established
needs in aquaculture. “Traditionally, biomass measurement has been important
for the fish farmer in order to get the most accurate estimate of slaughter
weight. Accurate slaughter weight means improved profitability – the more
accurate your estimate, the better price you will get. But the advantages are
more numerous if the accuracy improves.”
Too large error margins
Kolstø claims that the advantages of accurate biomass measurement gobeyond
slaughter weight estimation. “Today’s technology often has a margin of error of
3 to 5 %. The fish grows at a rate of about 1 % each day. When the margin of
error is larger than the growth rate of the fish, the weight data from the cage has
no value beyond estimating the slaughter weight at the end of the production
cycle. Our objective is to achieve only 1 % deviation by the end of the year –
and with such precision the industry can use biomass measuring as a decision
support from day to day.”
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