Scalable aquaculture systems can improve survival, reduce labor, and enhance animal welfare

To meet global food demands, aquaculture—the farming of aquatic creatures like fish or shrimp—is on the rise. Forming a multibillion-dollar industry, an estimated 94.4 million tons of aquatic animals were produced by aquaculture in 2022 alone. However, productivity in the industry is still limited due to early-life bottlenecks, with high mortality rates caused by disease outbreaks, environmental changes and stress.

Now, a team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) has developed a scalable aquaculture platform designed to address these challenges. The system automates the sensitive phases of aquaculture—hatching and transfers—which can minimize pathogen exposure, animal stress and labor input.

Developing a scalable automated aquaculture system

The system was originally developed to support cephalopod research at OIST, where culturing squid and octopus is particularly challenging. "Cephalopod hatchlings are extremely sensitive to direct manipulation," says Dr. Zdenek Lajbner, who leads the project. "Guiding them using light and water flow allows us to improve survival while reducing stress and labor."

The team—Zdenek Lajbner, Ryuta Nakajima, Mehmet Arif Zoral, Peter Babiak, John Parker, Mouez Lassoued and Jonathan Miller—designed a modular prototype, successfully testing this on multiple cephalopod species before recognizing the broader relevance of their system.

"Any aquatic species whose early life stages respond to light and flow, including fish and shrimp, can be maneuvered using the same principles," notes Dr. Lajbner.

By using a light and flow approach, they could eliminate handling-related stress by encouraging animals to move autonomously, improving welfare outcomes. The team also integrated IoT-enabled sensors to continuously monitor key environmental parameters, including temperature, salinity, and oxygen levels. These provide real-time data and alerts to remote users.

With automated, detailed, real-time characterization of each transported individual, immediate automated decisions can be made based on the information obtained.

"Our modular design enables the systems to be integrated into existing facilities, used as standalone recirculating units, or configured as mobile systems," adds Dr. Lajbner.

With integrated AI for automated counting, size-based sorting, behavioral monitoring, and health assessment, the platform could enable early-stage evaluation of stock quality.

Standardizing early-life handling and assessment could also help facilities shift from labor-intensive and subjective manual observation toward fast, accurate, data-driven decision-making.

Enhancing welfare while improving productivity

Animal stress during hatching and transfer is an important contributor to mortality and long-term aquaculture performance deficits. From an operational perspective, even modest improvements in early survival can have outsized economic effects, and reduce wasted feed, labor hours, and tank downtime.

"With global aquatic food consumption having increased by more than 480% since the 1960s, and growing pressure on wild stocks from climate change and overfishing, scalable automated aquaculture technologies are essential," emphasizes Dr. Lajbner. "We estimate that a 15–25% increase in early-stage survival can significantly improve effective output at farm scale."

The OIST team is now seeking industrial partners to validate the system in commercial hatcheries, expand species testing, and scale the platform for large-scale aquaculture operations.

Provided by Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology