Akvaplan-niva have collaborated with Nova Sea on the project.
Photo: Akvaplan-niva / Nova Sea /FHF
A new Norwegian system can detect the presence of sea lice in seawater in real-time, Norwegian seafood research funder FHF has announced.
The system, developed by ocean research and consultancy Akvaplan-niva and supported by funding from FHF, uses a special camera linked with AI technology to recognise lice in the water. According to the researchers, the intelligent camera system enables detection of lice before they attach to fish, enabling farm operators to track where and when the parasites are present.
The system has been undergoing testing in collaboration with Nova Sea, with a special camera set up on a buoy floating in the water at a farming facility. The researchers used two AI programs, dubbed UVPEC and PlanktonVision13, to find and sort sea lice, with the second program proving particularly accurate in the trial.
"The alerts are given in real time, and data from the system matches well with manual counts of sea lice on the fish, showing that the system can provide good alerts," FHF stated in a Norwegian language press release.
"The project is a contribution to being more proactive in the fight against salmon lice. It can give farmers a tool to react quickly and protect the fish in a better way, and perhaps especially contribute to better knowledge about the possible occurrence of lice in locations that have not yet been used," FHF added.
Following good results during the test period, the Akvaplan niva research team now intend to continue improving the set-up to improve hardware and sea lice detection, noting that the small size of sea lice larvae means that they can be difficult for the AI to distinguish from other debris present in the water.
