Abstract

One of the critical challenges that the global salmon farming industry will confront when upscaling production is accurate biomass control. Commercial salmon farming requires a significant level of certainty regarding fish count, average weight measurement, live weight distribution, and other production indicators. A reliable control system for assessing the biomass of farmed Atlantic salmon is essential for sustainable and cost-effective precision aquaculture. A study was done in four production sea-cages in a Chilean Atlantic salmon marine grow-out farm to estimate the average weight and frequency distribution utilizing the Vaki Biomassdaily (R) diode frames as an alternate technology to manual weight measurement. From post-smolt reception to fish harvest, diode frames were put in each sea-cage in a secure position for 15 months. There were no significant changes in length or average weight between manual sampling and frame estimate. The mean degree of accuracy for the average weight estimation was 98.83 % for the frames utilized in the four sea cages. The diode frames also achieved a high degree of precision in predicting the frequency distribution of fish. There were no statistically significant variations between the distribution variances of the diode frame measurements and the distribution variances of the fish received at the fish processing facility (FPF). The maximum difference between the average weight calculated by the frames and the average weight of the fish received in the processing facility was 2.4 %, with 99.66 % being the highest accuracy with only 19 g of difference. We determined that diode frames might replace manual weight assessments with greater reliability for growth monitoring and production management. To assure the optimal performance of the diode frames in terms of accuracy and precision for future commercialscale validations in the salmon farming business, the development of a standard best practice manual is necessary.