CAMPBELL RIVER, BC – Grieg Seafood and Scoot Science of Santa Cruz, California have partnered to launch an innovative ocean analytics and data management platform that will provide real-time data on ocean environmental conditions to Grieg’s salmon farms in British Columbia.
This platform, the SeaState Dashboard, unifies existing sensor networks on farms to collect information and provide a clear window into how salmon farms react to changing ocean conditions using in-pen data and publicly available data. This means better predicting ocean trends, giving Grieg an opportunity to reduce its exposure to marine risks, such as harmful plankton blooms and sea lice outbreaks, as well as improve fish welfare and efficiency.
Some of the data collected by this platform will also be accessible to Indigenous groups, universities, scientists and eNGOs in order to study ocean trends and understand the interaction between ecological systems (like wild salmon) and the changing ocean environment. The portal will also make other data available to the public, such as Grieg’s sea lice numbers and compliance with regulatory bodies, which aligns with Grieg’s transparency goals.
“As salmon farms are located in remote areas along the coastlines of our oceans, we have a unique opportunity to capture remote environmental data continuously 365 days a year,” said Dean Trethewey, Director of Seawater Production, Regulatory and Certifications at Grieg Seafood BC.
“We know accurate data drives sustainable decisions. With climate change and a new horizon of challenges in our oceans, our stewardship towards sharing data with key stakeholders is paramount.”
Grieg gave Scoot Science 20 years of archived data to use alongside the real-time data currently collected in the SeaState dashboard. With a deep background in ocean science informing Scoot’s artificial intelligence and statistical approaches, the team is beginning to understand important trends in the coastal ocean and has identified striking correlations between various environmental parameters in Grieg’s data. The result is that the SeaState platform can provide an accurate forecast in the ocean within three to four days.
This SeaState Dashboard will be implemented at all 22 of Grieg’s salmon farms in BC, before expanding to other Grieg Seafood regions in the world.
“Aquaculture can play an important role in providing healthy nutrition to people in the coming decades, but only if we find new ways to reduce our impact and improve fish welfare. It is exciting that start-ups outside traditional aquaculture are now looking to help us improve and solve our challenges. That’s exactly what we need,” said Grieg Seafood CEO Andreas Kvame. “We are still at the beginning of the digital revolution in fish farming, but I am confident that digitalization will transform our industry and make it more sustainable.”
Tools like the dashboard will provide a deeper understanding of how salmon farm operations are driven by the surrounding ocean environment, as well as inform more accuracy in precision aquaculture.
“We’re thrilled about this partnership. Grieg is a leader in precision aquaculture, and we believe that implementing our SeaState Dashboard and forecasting models will give a distinct competitive advantage. The scale of Grieg’s operations will give our team new insights and feedback for refining our analysis tools and will undoubtedly help us to best serve the top producers in aquaculture,” said Jonathan LaRiviere, co-founder and CEO of Scoot Science.
“Grieg’s commitment to the lowest possible environmental impact, strong community outreach, and focus on the welfare of their fish strongly align with our team’s mission of improving humanity’s relationship with the ocean.”
Once the Scoot Science platform is successfully integrated at Grieg’s BC farms, it will then be deployed at Grieg Seafood’s farms in Newfoundland and the Shetland Islands.
