The sonar has many beams that enable it to cover large areas, the entire volume of water in the pen, which allows you to see the overall picture, says Berit Heltne, Marketing Director at Aquabio.
The Research Council of Norway granted Aquabio 10 MNOK innovation funds for optimizing their feeding strategy based on monitoring with 3D sonar. This was the Research Council of Norway’s largest grant of all the innovation projects.
The multibeam sonar is originally made for military purposes, but Aquabio is using the technology to develop their own software so that it can be used in fish farms. The goal of the project is to develop software so that the sonar can monitor both the feed pellets and the behavior of the fish. Part of the project is also about combining the visualization and data from the sonar with data from other sensors. The aim is to enable the farmers to prevent overfeeding and underfeeding, which in turn should result in more consistent fish size and less feed waste.
Today, fish farmers use cameras, among other things, to monitor feeding, but they do not cover as large an area as the sonar, explains Berit Heltne, Marketing Director at Aquabio. The sonar has many beams that enable it to cover large areas, the entire volume of water in the pen, which allows you to see the overall picture, concludes Heltne.