Effective Asset Management For Aquaculture Farms

With this RFID solution, the asset management of your aquaculture farm can be done simply by having an employee walk through the farm while holding a handheld computer with an RFID reader, which tracks the tagged assets.

What the GAO RFID Aquaculture Asset Management System Tracks

Our system can track all aquaculture farm assets including:

• Pumps and nets
• Aeriation systems, such as blowers, fountain aerators and paddlewheels
• Oxygenation systems and oxygen meters
• Fish graders, fish pumps and fish elevators
• Feeders
• Transport tanks and other transportation assets, such as drums
• All other assets your aquaculture farm may utilize

An RFID tag needs to be attached to each asset in order for it to be tracked by the handheld RFID reader, which is held by an employee walking or driving through the farm.

Applications of the GAO RFID Aquaculture Asset Management System

The GAO RFID Aquaculture Asset Management System can be customized to meet the needs of your aquaculture farm regardless of its size.

There are all kinds of aquaculture farms, including those that specialize in:

• Shrimp farming
• Fish farming
• Oyster farming
• Mariculture
• Algaculture, such as seaweed farming
• Ornamental fish cultivation
• Farming as alternative food source
• Farming as an alternative fuel source
• All other types of aquaculture farming

The GAO RFID Aquaculture Asset Management System is well suited to manage all the specific assets associated with each type of aquaculture farming.

The Aquaculture Industry

Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the farming of fish, algae, aquatic plants and other organisms under controlled conditions. ‘Aquaponics’ is a popular method of aquaculture that integrates fish farming with aquatic plant farming. Farming includes breeding, raising and harvesting the fish or plants in different types of water, including freshwater and saltwater. Aquaculture is currently a $150 billion industry, with farmed fish, such as salmon and shrimp, having found enormous markets worldwide.

An important source of food and livelihood for millions of people worldwide, the industry is also beneficial to the ecosystem in some ways. For example, in cases where filter-feeding shellfish are kept in their natural environment rather than in filters, water quality of the ponds or lakes where they reside can greatly improve. Aquaculture farms are also in general less hazardous to the environment than cattle farms.

Despite being a multi-billion-dollar industry and supplying high qualities of protein to people’s diets for millennia, aquaculture faces its fair share of challenges. In some of its sectors, such as shrimp farming, disease causes significant problems, resulting in losses of up to 40% of farmed shrimp. Climate change brings issues of its own, with the current climate crisis causing entire ecosystems to die. Rising sea levels and ocean acidification are expected to cause a massive 30% drop in South-East Asia’s farmed marine fish production by 2050. Additionally, fish from the ocean is also used as a food supply for farmed fish and land farm animals such as chickens or pigs, which in turn is causing its numbers to dwindle quickly, reaching a point where the industry is growing larger than its feed supply. Certain farmed fish, such as salmon, require other fish and fish oils in order to thrive, which is becoming more difficult due to the decreasing numbers of wild fish in the ocean. Lack of wild fish has further increased demands of farmed fish from the public.

Alternative sources of feed that do not depend on ocean wildlife must be found for these aquatic creatures if aquaculture is to continue thriving sustainably, and there may be a few solutions on the horizon which are already being practiced in many farms, such as microalgae cultivation. Microalgae provide nutrition for fish, while at the same time helping to improve the aquaculture environment. Branchiopods are also of extreme importance in the aquaculture industry, as they are not only a growing food source for farm aquatic life, but their eggs can also come into good use. This is because they can be stored for long periods before hatching and being served as food for the fish when needed.

Three of the main fish species used in aquaculture in the US are catfish, trout and salmon, with catfish being the most popular. In Canada, Atlantic salmon is the most popular. Governments in both countries are eager to develop and expand the industry further, with the number of farms having significantly increased in States like Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as North and South Carolina, in the last few decades. Until fairly recently, aquaculture was not commonly practiced in the US, but in recent years more and more investors and business start-ups have become drawn to the industry, which provides us with a positive outlook towards its future despite the many challenges it is currently facing.