SeaRAS wins Aqua Nor innovation award

Aquaculture technology business SeaRAS has been declared as the winner of the prestigious Aqua Nor Innovation Award. The prize was presented this morning by Norway’s Fisheries Minister, Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen, at the opening of this year’s Aqua Nor trade show in Trondheim. Bergen-based company SeaRAS won its award for Aquasense, a new method for measuring and monitoring water parameters and especially H2S – otherwise known as hydrogen sulphide – at low levels in fish farms and tanks in wellboats. H2S is a major threat for fish farming and RAS (recirculating aquaculture systems) in particular. The SeaRAS system is capable of monitoring H2S down to a very low level level, 0.1µg/L (micrograms per litre), with an alarm triggered when the level of H2S reaches a given level. The system is already installed in many RAS farms and is also used in some wellboats to control levels of H2S in tanks before live fish is pumped on board and during transport/treatment. Two other companies were shortlisted for the Innovation Award: Portugal’s NORAS Global, which has developed U Safe, a remotely controlled lifebuoy for lifesaving in the case of person overboard incidents; and VAKI, part of the MSD Animal Health group, for its Density Control system, which – as part of the VAKI SmartFlow system, monitors, controls, and automates fish density to maximize fish welfare, and to enhance grading, vaccination and counting.