Ecotone hyperspectral camera for counting sea lice

Aquaculture can help to combat overfishing, while continuing to increase global food production. Sea lice, however, are a substantial concern for fish farmers, costing the industry up to a billion dollars every year.

In order to get an overview of sea lice levels, manual counting is today mandatory. This is labour-intensive and only collects limited amounts of data.

Ecotone has developed SpectraLice to make the working day easier for fish farmers.

The SpectraLice technology is based on hyperspectral sensors, which record not only red, green and blue – as limited by the human eye and a standard camera – but all colours in the visible light region.

Ecotone’s hyperspectral imaging technology makes it possible to automatically count sea lice, and even to distinguish between different stages of sea lice development. This gives fish farmers objective and accurate sea lice data, which can be reported effortlessly.

SpectraLice makes it possible to identify sea lice problems efficiently and at an early stage. It gives fish farmers robust data sets to support their decision making and simplify their reporting.

The technology reduces the need for manual handling of fish, which improves fish welfare and frees up the workforce for more productive tasks.

The demand for environmental monitoring is enormous across the aquaculture industry. Thousands of large and small fish farming facilities in Norway and across the globe will require accurate automated sea lice counting in the years to come.

Ecotone is a tech company founded in 2010, based on ground-breaking research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The company’s technology has been developed in close collaboration with world-leading aquaculture and petroleum companies. Ecotone is the only supplier of its technology and holds a patent in 15 countries around the world.