Tidal's platform is a digital solution which gathers data and analysis for aquaculture producers, based on a combination of underwater perception, machine learning and AI, with the aim of improve the sustainability and efficiency of aquaculture operations.
Until now, the platform was available to only a few pilot partners, including Norwegian salmon farmer Mowi, which is known to have been collaborating with Tidal on the technology development as early as 2017.
Tidal's approach includes a system of underwater cameras, sensors, machine perception tools and software designed to interpret complex ocean environments.
In a statement on the pilot project in 2020, Mowi said it had been already been working with Tidal for three years in developing the technology, that it planned to "roll out" the platform to "multiple sites across Norway".
In a statement, Tidal and Cognizant say the new partnership will now make the platform more widely available to the global aquaculture industry, helping aquaculture companies "make more intelligent decisions, build more resiliency into their operations, and run more efficiently in a strict regulatory environment."
The technology, Tidal says, can both improve business outcomes and help to lower the carbon footprint of aquaculture operations. For example, the technology can significantly lower feed wasteage, a significant source of carbon emissions in aquaculture, by using machine perception tools and AI to automate feeding time according to fish hunger levels.
"The current platform has been built and validated using Tidal's AI, which has been trained on 8 billion underwater observations of fish behavior across 900 terabytes of operational video," said Tidal Founder and CEO, Neil Davé.
Through its longstanding relationships with global enterprises that make up the Blue Economy, Cognizant will be able to help companies integrate Tidal's technology into their enterprise systems, linking data from across their business to gather insights and make decisions that improve efficiency throughout the entire value chain.
Over the longer term, Cognizant and Tidal intend to apply the platform to other "blue economy" sectors with an opportunity for decarbonization, including transportation, energy and "blue carbon" industries.
"To preserve ocean health, we need to take an innovation-driven and collaborative approach with aquaculture companies and other businesses that make their living on and in the ocean," Davé said.
"Through our collaboration with Cognizant, we hope to build on our initial success in the Norwegian aquaculture industry, and eventually expand to other sectors of the Blue Economy to make a meaningful impact in ocean health and global decarbonization," Davé added.
Tidal, a project inside Alphabet's Moonshot Factory, is developing a new platform to advance our understanding of ocean health and climate change. Tidal is combining machine learning with new types of underwater perception hardware to gain unprecedented visibility into aquatic relationships and ecosystems
Cognizant is an American multinational information technology services and consulting company. It is headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, U.S. Cognizant is part of the NASDAQ-100 and trades under CTSH.
