© Minnowtech
Called BRS-1 and developed by Minnowtech*, a Baltimore company, the device aims to improve the efficiency of shrimp farming and can also help detect anomalies such as disease outbreaks.
“Minnowtech surveyed farmers around the world about their problem with shrimp biomass – underfeeding, overfeeding, inability to manage their crops, not knowing when to harvest. Exporters, importers: everyone suffers from the biomass problem,” explains founder Dr. Suzan Shahrestani.
“Shrimp grow in cloudy water. When you put in aeration systems and there are millions of animals swimming around the pond, it's really hard for farmers to understand how the population is growing and understand the history of their farm,” she adds.
While shrimp farmers traditionally estimate biomass by networking small areas of their ponds and extrapolating that data, Minnowtech's device uses sonar combined with machine vision and computer vision to count individual animals in the water column, and Shahrestani likens it to “shrimp TV.” .
Minnowtech sells the devices and charges a monthly fee for data reporting. The devices have a lifespan of three to five years and require three full growth cycles for calibration (so that they can be adapted to the farm's technology and husbandry practices).
“It's a window that allows us to make sure we understand potential events, operations and things that impact our specifics in this operation in this pond. And we say three months because a growth cycle is that long, which means we're entering from DOC [day of culture] one to harvest, and we capture all potential events. We also monitor how the shrimp are growing in your pond and what the aerators are doing. It gives us the opportunity to evaluate the data set and understand what we are dealing with. We are not a thermometer that you can just throw in. We really need to go in and show the system what the characteristics of the pond are,” explains Shahrestani.
While the devices are currently used in a variety of shrimp farming regions and systems – from intensive ponds in Indonesia to indoor RAS facilities in Europe – the company is particularly targeting producers in Ecuador.
“Ecuador is where we have concentrated our resources, we have the most customers and we understand how shrimp grows in a five-hectare pond. It also has a lot to do with the market and customer profile – these are large companies that want to invest in technology. We are also in the same time zone and they use the US dollar,” Shahrestani reflects.
© Minnowtech
Impressive results
Building a good working relationship with its Ecuadorian clients means they now have the freedom to share some of their results.
“We have been working in Ecuador for several years and are finally allowed to share some data from one of our customers. This is really exciting because we are starting to understand the population dynamics of shrimp – it is not a linear growth curve, farmers can respond to the patterns,” notes Shahrestani.
“It's useful when things aren't ideal. We are creating a baseline to ensure farmers do not exceed their carrying capacity,” she adds.
This was confirmed by one of their experiments, which found that the farmer in question would have been better off harvesting 11 days earlier, as in this additional time the pond's carrying capacity was exceeded, mortality rates increased, and total biomass began to fall. According to Minnowtech's calculations, this meant the final value of the shrimp harvested from the pond was about $30,000 lower than it could have been.
“We show it with a level of accuracy and consistency that can inform the farmer when to harvest,” notes Shahrestani.
In another experiment, their sensor detected a dramatic decline in biomass, indicating a disease outbreak.
“Within a few days, we told the company that something was happening in the pond and that we thought they needed to check it out,” explains Shahrestani.
“The data speaks, it speaks loud and clear, and this type of information will transform the industry by eliminating uncertainty,” she adds.
A global outlook
The company calibrates its devices for all types of systems.
“I think our challenge is to reach enough farms to understand the variability in the way farmers grow, as well as the variability and the equipment they use. Answering questions like: When is the water drained before harvest? What are their eating habits? “What are their ventilation patterns?” Shahrestani explains.
The pond design determines the setup required.
“When we are in Southeast Asia, we place a device in the pond, connect it with a cable and communicate with our electronics on the pond. It is then sent to the cloud to provide the farmer with biomass. In larger systems, such as the 5 ha ponds typically seen in Ecuador, we would place three sensors in each pond and distribute them from the Entrada to the Salida. Installation can be completed in less than an hour, but you will need an internet connection and electricity,” notes Shahrestani.
© Minnowtech
Farmers' reactions
Shahrestani recognizes that it takes time for farmers to integrate the company's data into their daily operations.
“There is a level of excitement coupled with a level of hesitation because it is a new type of information that now needs to be integrated into the way they make decisions. It's our job to get them to trust the data and the information. It's really about making the information digestible. I think we are now at a stage with customers where we are in constant dialogue with them. They are very excited. We just need to figure out how they can use it to help them make decisions to save money every day. We're on board with some of them, and we've made enormous progress with others in the last few months through open dialogue with customers,” she emphasizes.
How the system will evolve
Looking forward, Shahrestani notes that the company's pipeline includes improvements to the current system, which will likely include automatic alerts to notify customers of unusual changes in shrimp biomass. She also believes there are opportunities to use the device for fish farmed in murky water, such as pangasius in Asia and catfish in the United States.
Additionally, the company is working to provide insights into shrimp size and how agricultural activities affect shrimp behavior.
“You can increase efficiency by understanding how the shrimp react to what you do, such as whether you use one feed or another. Then you can really start to hypothesize about what’s going on because it becomes a tool for tracking how your shrimp react, similar to how cows and sheep do on land,” explains Shahrestani.
In the short term, she adds, they will be able to provide daily – rather than weekly – biomass data before the end of the year, which will allow farmers to respond much more quickly to any changes in their ponds.
*Minnowtech is part of Hatch's investment portfolio, but The Fish Site maintains editorial independence.