Tidal promises lice control system using 'targeted energy'

Aquaculture technology company Tidal today launched an artificial intelligence-powered system that operates continuously to detect and neutralise lice without stressful handling of fish, although it won’t be available until next year.

Tidal is a spin off from Google X, the moonshot factory, and already supplies fish farmers with the hardware and software platform for autonomous feeding, biomass estimation, welfare monitoring and automatic lice counting cage camera system mounted on an autonomous winch.

Its new innovation, Tidal Lice Control, builds on the existing hardware, continuously monitoring each pen 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Targeting lice with light

When the system detects lice on a fish, it delivers what Tidal describes as “targeted energy” that deconstructs lice without compromising welfare.  Operating quietly in the background, the winch moves horizontally and vertically, following the fish to ensure full coverage of the pen.

In answer to a question from Fish Farming Expert, Tidal added that it has developed a new, patented approach of delivering energy to target lice with light. This approach allows Tidal to target multiple fish at the same time, increasing the efficiency of treatment delivery. It offers flexibility to adapt the amount of energy delivered.

“As an industry, we’ve been living with the high costs and lost productivity that parasitic threats bring,” says Anders Fossøy, general manager of Tidal Norway. “We built Lice Control with the same mindset we had at Google X - applying AI and robotics to real-world, high-impact problems. Farmers can now protect fish without chemicals, stress, or downtime, which means healthier fish and lower costs.”

Kristine Langaunet, senior sales executive at Tidal, described Lice Control as a “natural evolution” of the company’s autonomous feeding solution.

“By building Lice Control into the same system farmers already use for feeding and monitoring, we reduce the amount of equipment needed in the pen,” said Langaunet.

Tidal Lice Control is currently in laboratory and field trials, with commercial rollout planned for 2026.