Aquaculture Europe 2015 – XpertSea
Count and size aquatic organisms
in seconds Innovative device hits international market this year
A
quaculture is the fastest growing food source in the world. On an annual basis, we now consume twice as much seafood as we do beef. And the global population continues to grow: in 2050, there will be 10 billion people on earth, and with already 800 million
malnourished people today, it is becoming apparent that the aquaculture industry will need to play a major role in solving the impending food short- age by providing the world with a reliable and sustainable source of protein. However, being far less developed than agriculture, a huge technology gap is currently preventing aquaculture from reaching its full potential. Two years ago, in an attempt to solve one of its main technological chal- lenges, the industry approached Canadian technology company XpertSea to request a solution for inventory management. Because, be it biomass, fertiliser or feed, in any type of farming, every input and every output must be counted. Since then, XpertSea has visited more than 100 aquaculture facilities and has had interactions with more than 1000 producers, realising along the way that even if there is an improvement in feed formulations or genetic pools of fi sh or shrimp, without an effi cient production system, the whole industry will struggle to reach sustainability (lots of waste, lower margins, no accurate data for optimising cultures, rampant diseases, and so on).
It is from this industry pull and strategic collaborations with leading companies, universities and research centres that XpertSea developed the XperCount, a device built on patented technology that merges optics and machine vision to count, size and image millions of small aquatic organisms within seconds, effectively doing away with traditional labour-intensive methods such as hand counting. Specimens can be counted within 10 seconds in volumes of water up to 10 litres, with accuracy up to 95 per cent. The XperCount features a robust bucket with a fully electronic lid, a 7in touch screen and a long-autonomy battery, meaning no external computer is required during counts. Weighing approximately 7lb, the device can be transported easily by one person through facilities and requires no installation like fl ow-through counters, thus integrating quickly and easily in all types of aquaculture operations. After the initial product was purchased by more than 80 customers in 20 different countries, XpertSea is now an- nouncing the international market release of the updated XperCount. Initial research has shown that by using the XperCount to reduce their feed and labour cost, producers can increase profi t margins by up to 40 per cent. XpertSea continually works towards developing new applications to fi t the needs of all types of aquaculture producers and to make the Xper- Count as fl exible a device as possible. A host of custom applications have already been developed for counting eggs, nauplii, larvae, alevins, spat, juve- niles, microalgae, artemia and rotifers for a wide variety of aquatic species, from shrimp, crab and lobster to echinoderms, live feed, microalgae and all the industry’s most farmed fi sh species. Furthermore, XpertSea observed while visiting customers worldwide that producers were often mishandling, losing, or simply not recording pre- cious data from their aquaculture production, and farmers, whose personal lives were all digital, realised it was time to digitise their business too. The company became aware that a hardware device that could count aquatic
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organisms was only the fi rst step, prompting the evolution of its offer into a complete and integrated solution.
Customers who purchase the XperCount will
Above: User-friendly management tool
now be given access to XpertSea’s online data management system for aquaculture produc- tion, which automatically saves the device’s measurements to the cloud through a wireless connection. By centralising and organising this digital data in a comprehensive and secure way, XpertSea aims to provide aquaculture producers worldwide with a user-friendly inventory man- agement tool that will allow them to benchmark their production and access customised reports and insights on invaluable measurements such as survival and growth rates. This data will help producers make the best decisions to improve their processes, increase their yield and, ultimately, reach sustainability. But just as importantly, this is an opportunity to in- sure that the world’s oceans provide responsibly sourced protein to the ever growing population. The XperCount and data platform are sched- uled for release this autumn. FF
www.fishfarmer-magazine.com
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