Aquaticode, the developer of an AI-powered fish-sorting system, has entered an agreement to deploy its technology with sea bass and sea bream producer Ilknak.
Aquaticode said Ilknak will use its technology for phenotyping and sorting as many as 300 million sea bass and sea bream each year, replacing manual visual assessments to evaluate juveniles at the company’s hatcheries.
“Ilknak is one of the most significant juvenile producers in the world, and this agreement is a clear signal of where the industry is heading,” Aquaticode CEO Stian Rognlid said in a release.
Aquaticode said it will deploy its “AquaLens” technology to the company’s facilities, leasing the system and enabling physical sorting of juveniles across all of Ilknak’s hatchery operations.
“AquaLens brings a level of biological precision to hatchery production that was not previously achievable at commercial scale. We are proud to be working with Ilknak and to be deploying this technology where it can have a direct impact on outcomes,” Rognlid said.
According to the company, the technology uses multi-sensor imaging and machine learning to analyze fish and sort out any unviable individuals at the point of the assessment. By removing those unviable fish early, producers can reduce feed and labor costs while also allowing for higher tank capacity by making sure resources are spent on viable fish rather than fish that will never make it to market size.
“Quality at the juvenile stage determines what is possible later in the production cycle,” Ilknak CEO Georgios Meletiadis said in a release. “We have always invested in the best available technology, and AquaLens gives us a level of individual-level insight that was simply not available before. Applying this across 300 million fish represents a meaningful step forward for how we operate.”
Aquaticode has already secured contracts with major seafood companies, including contracts with Australis and AquaChile. Camanchaca trialed the company’s AI-powered gender-sorting system as early as 2023, and Aquaticode said it is building a presence in Mediterranean species, with the Ilknak contract a major step toward wider scale in the region.
Aquaticode was founded by Nacre Capital and has tapped into industry expertise to expand its fish analysis technology.
