According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, Norway is the world’s largest producer of farmed Atlantic salmon and a leading exporter of seafood, while the United States remains the largest importer of these products. Two MIT students recently traveled to Trondheim, Norway, to learn about cutting-edge technologies being developed and implemented in marine aquaculture.
Beckett Devoe, a senior majoring in artificial intelligence and decision making, and Tony Tang, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering, first collaborated with MIT Sea Grant through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). They have been involved in projects focusing on the design of wave generators and the application of machine learning to analyze the health of oyster larvae in hatcheries. While coastal aquaculture is a well-established industry in Massachusetts and the United States, open ocean agriculture here is still a nascent field that faces unique and sophisticated challenges.
To support better understand this emerging industry, MIT Sea Grant created the AquaCulture Shock joint initiative, funded by an aquaculture technology and education travel grant through the National Sea Grant College Program. Working with the MIT-Scandinavia MISTI (MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives) program, MIT Sea Grant provided Devoe and Tang with summer aquaculture internships at SINTEF Ocean, one of the largest research institutes in Europe.
“The opportunity to work on this hands-on aquaculture project within a world-renowned research institution, in an area of the world known for innovation in marine technology – that’s what MISTI is all about,” says Madeline Smith, managing director of MIT-Scandinavia. “Not only do students gain valuable experience in their fields of study, but they develop cultural understanding and skills that prepare them to be future global leaders.” Both students worked at SINTEF Ocean’s Aquaculture and Autonomous Systems Robotics and Systems Laboratory (ACE-Robotic Lab), a facility designed to develop and test fresh technologies in aquaculture.
“Norway has a unique geographical location where all these fjords are located,” says Sveinung Ohrem, research manager in the Aquaculture Robotics and Automation Group at SINTEF Ocean. “So you have a lot of sheltered waters, which makes them ideal for marine aquaculture.” He estimates that there are about a thousand fish farms along the Norwegian coast and discusses some of the tools used in the industry: decision-making systems to collect and visualize data for farmers and operators; inspection and cleaning robots; environmental sensors for measuring oxygen, temperature and currents; echo sounders that send acoustic signals to determine where fish are; and cameras to support estimate biomass and adjust feeding. “Feeding is a huge challenge,” he notes. “Feed is by far the largest cost, so optimizing feeding leads to very significant cost reductions.”
During her internship, Devoe focused on a project using artificial intelligence to optimize fish nutrition. “I try to pay attention to different characteristics of the farm – perhaps how big the fish are or how cold the water is… and use that to provide farmers with the optimal amount of feed to get the best results, while saving money on feed,” he explains. “It was good to learn some machine learning techniques and just get better at it while doing a real-world project.”
In the same lab, Tang worked on simulating an underwater manipulator vehicle system to navigate farms and repair damage to cage nets using a robotic arm. Ohrem says there are thousands of aquaculture robots currently operating in Norway. “The scale is huge,” he says. “You can’t have 8,000 people controlling 8,000 robots – it’s not economically or practically feasible. That’s why you need to increase the level of autonomy of all these robots.”
The collaboration between MIT and SINTEF Ocean began in 2023, when MIT Sea Grant hosted Eleni Kelasidi, a visiting scientist from the ACE-Robotic Lab. Kelasidi worked with MIT Sea Grant director Michael Triantafyllou and mechanical engineering professor Themistoklis Sapsis to develop underwater controllers, models and vehicles for aquaculture while studying fish-machine interactions.
“We have a long and fruitful collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and SINTEF, which continues important efforts such as the aquaculture project with Dr. Kelasidi,” says Triantafyllou. “Norway is at the forefront of marine aquaculture and MIT Sea Grant is investing in this field, so we expect great collaboration results.”
Kelasidi, who is currently a professor at NTNU, also directs the Field Robotics Lab, focusing on developing resilient robotic systems to operate in highly sophisticated and challenging environments. “Aquaculture is one of the most difficult fields in which we can demonstrate autonomous solutions because everything moves,” he says. Kelasidi describes aquaculture as a deeply interdisciplinary field, requiring more students with backgrounds in both biology and technology. “We can’t develop technologies that are applicable to industries where we don’t have biological ingredients,” he explains, “and then apply them somewhere where we have live fish or other living organisms.”
Ohrem confirms that maintaining fish welfare is a key driver for aquaculture researchers and companies, especially as the industry continues to evolve. “So the big question is,” he says, “how can you ensure that?” SINTEF Ocean holds four research licenses for fish farming, which it operates in cooperation with SalMar, the second largest salmon farmer in the world. Students had the opportunity to visit one of the industrial scale farms, Singsholmen, on the island of Hitra. The farm has 10 enormous, circular mesh pens, approximately 50 meters in diameter, that protrude deep below the surface, each holding up to 200,000 salmon. “I have to physically touch the net and see how [robotic] the arm could repair the net,” Tang says.
Kelasidi emphasizes that information gained in the field cannot be obtained in an office or laboratory. “It opens you up and makes you realize the scale of the challenges and the scale of the amenities,” he says. It also highlights the importance of international and institutional cooperation for the development of this field of research and the development of more resilient robotic systems. “We need to try to address this problem and solve it together.”
MIT Sea Grant and the MIT-Scandinavia MISTI program are currently recruiting a fresh group of four MIT students who will intern in Norway this summer at institutes developing marine agriculture technologies, including NTNU’s Field Robotics Lab in Trondheim. Students interested in autonomy, deep learning, simulation modeling, underwater robotic systems, and other aquaculture-related areas should contact Lily Keyes at MIT Sea Grant.