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October 9, 2018 01:00 pm

Salmon Farmers Are Scanning Fish Faces To Fight Killer Lice

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Millions of Atlantic salmon could have their faces stored in digital databases to track their health and single out those posing threats to their marine surroundings. And before you ask if fish have faces, they do: A company in Norway has developed a 3D scanner that can tell salmon apart based on the distinct pattern of spots around their eyes, mouth and gills. Fish-farming giant Cermaq Group AS wants to roll out the technology at salmon pens along Norway's fjord-etched coastline, betting it can prevent the spread of epidemics like sea lice that infect hundreds of millions of farmed fish and cost the global industry upwards of $1 billion each year. Cargill wants to apply facial recognition to aqua farms, and Cermaq, operator of over 200 salmon and trout farms in Norway, Canada and Chile, is already doing tests on the iFarm design with its Norwegian technology partner BioSort AS. It'll look a lot like existing fish farms, with networks of 160-meter (525-foot) circular nets that are typically 35 meters deep and home to up to 200,000 salmon. The difference is that iFarms would be equipped with camera scanners at the water surface. On any given day, about 40,000 salmon in each pen will rise to above water for a gulp of air, something their bladders need to regulate buoyancy. Each time a salmon does this, typically every four days, it would go through a funnel fitted with sensors that would screen its face and body so records can be kept on each fish. If the machines pick up on abnormalities like lice or skin ulcers, the infected fish can be quarantined for medical treatment.

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Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ZVZcS-YzUe4/salmon-farmers-are-scanning-fish-faces-to-fight-killer-lice

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