What’s next for AI cameras?
04 July 2025
When Ace Aquatec designed its biomass camera the intent was to create a weight estimation system capable of providing the most reliable biomass readings on the market. This was defined not just in terms of average weights, but across all size distribution bands. After an extensive period of R+D, and contracts secured globally with some of the biggest fish farming companies in the world, today we can say we’ve achieved this incredible accuracy, not just every now and then, but across successive deployments, with multiple strains, multiple sites, and multiple species. All this being achieved in some of the toughest conditions where customers tell us our competitors have not been able to achieve the same.
And we’ve achieved this through some unique technologies – a proprietary AI winch system, that can automatically move the camera across the pens, moving up/down the water column, as well as rotating to track fish and sample the total strata of the stock.
We’ve developed a self-guided tracking system able to analyse swim speeds, and a proprietary spot detection system, able to identify individuals to avoid double counting and maintain individual health records.
Image: Spot pattern detection segmentation masks autogenerated by the A-BIOMASS®
The beauty of Ace Aquatec’s A-BIOMASS® system has been its small physical footprint (less than 8kg), with tough durable housings (POM) and scratch proof sapphire glass which makes it suitable for some of the toughest weathers. We made the decision early on not to produce a camera with artificial lighting that could impact maturation in cages and disrupt the quality of farmer’s stocks, instead utilising extremely high-definition monochrome cameras able to operate in starlight conditions. These elements combined have allowed us to achieve performance levels which our customers (from Scotland to New Zealand) tell us are unparalleled in their experience with AI biomass systems.
But we’re not sitting on our laurels. Our health module is capturing huge swathes of data automatically on wounds, classifying fish quality into ‘superior’, ‘ordinary’, and ‘downgrades’ before harvest. This allows customers to take action in advance of harvesting such as altering feed for wound recovery. Our colour sensors have been upgraded to provide 3x the pixels of our first variant, allowing greater accuracy of detections across sealice, health issues and individual detection.
Image: Wound detection within the A-BIOMASS® camera portal
Our portal has been turbo charged to speed up the real-time display of fish measurements, and customer feedback on detection of wounds has provided opportunities to refine detections and improve our algorithms. Feed conversion stats and recommendation for feed (based upon water temperature and growth curves) will be available by the end of 2025, and our proprietary harvest software related to our stunner products allows seamless connectivity in data from cage to slaughterhouse.
Opportunities abound, AI is taking more and more of the challenges out of fish farming – from early detection of fish health issues, to water quality, and feed conversation analysis. This is an exciting time to be at the forefront of a new era in fish farming, and we thank our customers who have committed to our systems and work with us continually to support their operations and improve our capabilities.
By Nathan Pyne-Carter, CEO Ace Aquatec
