Validation campaign of a smart dynamic scale for measuring live-fish biomass in aquaculture

Abstract

Aquaculture is one of the most important food production sector in the world. Feed represents a relevant cost in fish farming activity, as well as a considerable source of environmental pollution. The need of precisely estimate the fish biomass and stocking density is crucial to avoid overfeeding, thus pollution and economic loss. Recently a cheap dynamic scale (by MEGA Materials srl) has been developed, based on a board of the Arduino family, suitable to measure live-fish weights. Bluetooth transmitter and a specific app allowed the communication to smartphones and laptops. In this validation campaign a comparison of static Lab scale vs. four different acquisition patterns of the dynamic scale is presented, consisting in repeated series of measurement. The aim is to measure the weight of seabream juveniles/adult reared in both off-shore and in-land facilities, saving time and keeping high precision. The comparison of measurement within static Lab scale and dynamic scale shows significant differences (P<0.0001), highlighting that the dynamic scale achieved steady weight measurement after few reps. The most performing measurement setting of dynamic scale was proven to be 8*10, having eight repeated measures each as average out of ten readings in 1 second time-lap.