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SalMar teams up with Tidal to advance fish farming automation
Salmon farming heavyweight SalMar and aquaculture technology provider Tidal have announced a strategic collaboration to scale advanced automation and AI-driven operations.
The work focuses on accelerating deployment of automated feeding, piloting a state of the art lice-mitigation system, and enabling real-time industrial scale farm intelligence to further increase fish welfare.
“Tidal’s mission is to support sustainable growth in aquaculture and protect the ocean,” said Rajesh Jadhav, chief executive of Tidal, which is a spinout of X, Google’s Moonshot Factory.
“Working with SalMar - a group with deep aquaculture value chain experience - allows us to continue to deliver our best-in-class AI-powered robotics and control platform into real-world industrial operations at scale.”
Key objectives include deployment of Tidal’s all-in-one camera systems and environmental sensors at a number of SalMar sites, streaming into its data platform for real-time monitoring to strengthen welfare, early lice detection, risk forecasting, and treatment effectiveness monitoring.
Tidal’s autonomous feeding systems will also be applied across several SalMar sites for feeding and growth consistency, FCR (feed conversion ratio) improvement and waste reduction. Minimising wasted feed will substantially reduce CO2 footprint.
Lice mitigation
The collaboration also involves the testing and validation of Tidal’s autonomously operating system for in-pen lice mitigation, and the application of artificial intelligence for efficiencies in the value chain - from individual fish identification and tracking of growth, lice levels and welfare to power breeding programmes, as well as large language models developed with Google.
Astro Teller, “captain of moonshots” at X, said: “Tidal’s journey is a great example of the X Moonshot Factory’s belief that tackling the hardest problems first is often the fastest way to real-world impact. We’ve always felt that this approach - deep tech, rigorous science, and patience before scaling - would set Tidal up for meaningful commercial growth. It’s exciting to see that play out as Tidal teams up with SalMar at a moment when the industry is ready for what they’ve built.”
On the salmon's terms
SalMar chairman Gustav Witzøe said: “SalMar has always aimed to move the aquaculture industry toward smarter, more sustainable operations - and always on salmon’s terms. We look forward to working with Tidal, whose platform can further strengthen our ability to deliver on that promise.
“We anticipate that automated feeding and a new lice treatment technique, together with more accurate data from our farming sites, has the potential to shape the next generation of salmon farming.”
