It’s important for us to know exactly how many fish are in each tank. Because if a tank is over-crowded, it’s bad for fish health, welfare and growth!
That means we count fish.. A LOT! By the time we harvest a trout, it’s been counted at least a DOZEN times.
How do we do it? Most counting takes place when fish move into bigger tanks.
When they’re small (under 5g), we do it all by weight.
- We sample a hundred fish to get the average weight of the tank.
- We fill a bucket with water and put it on the scale.
- We net the fish out of the tank and into the bucket.
- Then record the weight, and gently dump the fish into their new tank.
- If a bucket weighs 20kg an fish are 20g, there are 1,000 in the bucket!
When they’re bigger (over 5g), we use automatic fish counters.
And thank COD almighty for automatic fish counters, as we used to do it all by weight!
- A fish pump gently pumps them into the counting trailer.
- They are spread across a table and a VAKI fish counter takes a rolling video of the fish and “counts” them using its optics engine.
- It means we can count thousands an hour in a safe, low-stress way for the fish.
In addition to counting batches, we take samples of each batch on a weekly or monthly basis to make sure tanks are never over-crowded or over-density!
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