Bluegrove, an Oslo, Norway-based aquatech firm formed in June following a merger of CageEye and fish farming equipment maker NorseAqua, has acquired SEALAB in a strategic merger that will see both companies combining their sensor innovations and creating an open platform for integration with other suppliers.
The companies expect to meld their aquaculture sensor technology expertise via the acquisition, ultimately improving “how fish are being observed and how behavior is being analyzed,” they said in a 26 August press release. As part of the merger, SEALAB Ocean Group will invest a minimum of NOK 44 million (USD 4.9 million, EUR 4.2 million) of new capital into the Bluegrove organization to help support its expansion.
“By bringing together two of the world leaders in aquaculture sensor technology, we will deliver solutions that improve the welfare of farmed fish and raise productivity levels in the salmon farming industry,” Bluegrove CEO Bendik S. Søvegjarto said.
“Advanced computer vision and machine learning techniques make it possible to get a better understanding of the underwater situation in sea-based salmon farming,” Hans Michael Hansen, a technology investor and board member of SEALAB Ocean Group, added.
Bluegrove subsidiary CageEye will integrate its acoustic underwater sensor technology with SEALAB’s underwater light and camera vision creations, the companies confirmed.
“Both solutions are used to monitor fish in cages in order to develop a better understanding of their behavior and their feeding requirements, but each one makes quite different observations,” Søvegjarto said.
While Bluegrove’s hydroacoustic sensors are deployed to chronicle the behavior of an entire school of fish in a cage, SEALAB’s image quality solutions allow operators to see pellets and fish at a level of detail unavailable in other cameras.
“Each solution delivers vast sets of data, and these will be combined to carry out analysis to develop algorithms in a machine learning environment,” Søvegjarto said.
Advanced machine learning algorithms for fish monitoring developed by SEALAB will be inputted into Bluegrove’s feeding solutions, the latter confirmed.
”SEALAB’s experts have always been working to improve underwater sight and analysis, and obviously the more data we gather the better. Our ambition of being an open platform, generating extensive amounts of data from the ocean to create AI software, matches the data-driven mindset that Bluegrove has. Once the board of Sealab Ocean Group decided to sell to CageEye AS, I believed becoming part of Bluegrove would speed up developments as we continue to strive towards shared goals,” according to Hansen.
The combination of behavioral analysis of an entire population with individual monitoring allows for new opportunities “to observe and analyze fish and measure their response towards new types of feeding,” Bluegrove said.
“We have seen quite some developments in fish feed over the last few years. As feeding companies and farmers are starting to adopt alternative ingredients, such as insects, they need to develop an in-depth understanding of how the fish respond to them,” Søvegjarto said. “As the system manages to combine signs of diseases from individual fish with anomalies in the behavior of an entire school, farmers can get an earlier detection of possible outbreaks or welfare being at risk."
Through the acquisition, Bluegrove is looking to extend its services to others by way of an open platform that “will result in further development and use of advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning software throughout the aquaculture industry.”
“We will support an extensive range of camera systems and we will enable easy integration of our hardware with that of other companies, offering farmers the possibility to easily combine solutions and equipment,” Søvegjarto said. “We feel it's important to give our farming partners the freedom to choose which suppliers they want to work with, so the competitive playing field is level, and we all work together to improve the aquaculture sector.”
Bluegrove said it will continue to develop technologies for salmon and other species. Meanwhile, SEALAB has found a new home in Europe through the acquisition, said Ståle Spjøtvold, a board member for the company.
“We are happy that the shareholders of SEALAB Ocean Group gave a board mandate to give the company new life. After three board meetings with unanimous consent, we found a new home in Europe’s most exciting aquatech platform and sensor company,” Spjøtvold said. “We expect tremendous benefits to emerge from the combination of SEALAB’s and Bluegrove’s technologies and capabilities. As a joint force, they will be in a strong position to grow in ways that will benefit both the aquaculture industry and society more broadly. The agreed investment into Bluegrove shows how committed we are.”
Teams and technologies have already started being integrated between the two firms, with SEALAB’s technical expertise and personnel expected to further bolster Bluegrove's ability to shape the Internet of Species (IoS). Combining technology with that of Bluegrove subsidiaries CageEye and NorseAqua, the company is focused on helping “to observe, analyze and understand the behavior of animals and plants in order to balance their needs with those of nature more broadly,” it explained.
“If we want to produce responsibly and use our scarce resources wisely, we must make sure that technology oversees and assures the ecological balance of a farm. Long-term ecology models are good for consumers, good for the earth, and good business for all stakeholders. They create a foundation for sustainable economic growth as we set out to provide enough protein-rich food for a fast-growing global population,” Søvegjarto added.
Photo courtesy of Bluegrove
