Ecotone seabed mapping for sustainable aquaculture

Aquaculture can help to combat overfishing, while continuing to increase global food production. Many fish farms, however, face problems such as build-up of waste and faeces on the seabed, disease and fish escapes.

Today’s technology for monitoring the seabed relies on sampling of a few selected locations. This makes it difficult to register the full environmental status of a fish farming site, especially over time.

Seabed mapping with automatically classified images

Ecotone's technology makes use of a hyperspectral camera, recording not only red, green and blue – as limited by the human eye and a standard camera – but all colours in the visible light region.

All the recorded images are automatically identified and classified according to species, mineral sedimentation, biological features, and more. This means that all reflected light from the seabed is captured to create a complete and comprehensive visual representation of the seabed area.

Moving the camera across the entire area creates a continuous and detailed map of the seabed. Recording at different times – before and during production, in the fallow period, etc. – means the map can be used to closely monitor the overall development of the fish farm and its immediate surroundings.

Concrete benefits

Ecotone makes it possible for aquaculture producers to identify problems at an early stage and take action where and when necessary.

An accurate and continuously updated map of the seabed captures changes over time. It enables easy counting of species and fauna under a fish farm, providing a comprehensive overview of the immediate area. This is useful both for immediate operational issues and for long-term strategies, as well as for external reporting.

Market potential

The demand for increased 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 seabed mapping 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 across the world.