UMITRON PTE. LTD. (Singapore, Co-founder/ Managing director Masahiko Yamada, hereinafter UMITRON) is bringing more satellite data to the aquaculture industry with the roll out of the Pulse iOS application and the kick off of a new project with the Japan Space Forum*.
Pulse is a new ocean data service from Umitron that provides a high-resolution map of critical environmental parameters such as water temperature, chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen, salinity, and wave height. The iOS application launch completes Umitron’s roll out of Pulse after the initial launch of Pulse for desktop computers in July followed by the Android application release in November.
As Pulse’s user base has grown there has been positive feedback from farmers growing a variety of species in regions around the world. When asked about how Pulse is helping improve farm operations Gary Zippel of Zippel’s Smoky Bay Oysters in South Australia replied “Temperature data helps me make management decisions about grading, and over time I will align outcomes with the data to make other management decisions’’. Fish farmers are also benefiting from the data provided by Pulse, Hyodo-suisan in Ehime, Japan has been using Pulse to monitor their red sea bream farm, they recently shared that “We check and record the temperature, dissolved oxygen and salinity values displayed on Umitron Pulse daily. Until now, we have been using a sensor to manually check each water quality parameter individually. Compared to the old operation, Pulse has made processing data much easier and faster and not dependent on the weather or any equipment”. They also added “being able to visualize a wide area rather than a single point for important parameters such as chlorophyll and wave height is extremely useful for understanding our farm site’s environment more deeply. We think Pulse has the power to appeal to many farmers. …
Water behaves in mysterious ways. Fluids are notoriously difficult to understand and model. Hydraulic and ocean engineers know water better than anyone, but still they must use their best guess and judgement to design systems that can withstand the powerful forces of the ocean.
We do know that water and waves follow a few basic rules. Wave height in the open ocean (where the water is deep) depends on just a few factors, the wind speed, the duration of the wind at a given speed, and the fetch. The fetch is a unique word that just describes the distance the wind can travel without being blocked by land. In the open ocean the fetch is potentially thousands of kilometers, while in a bay it may just be 500 meters. …
Blood, sweat, and tears. All of these fluids from our body contain both salt and water. Fish are the same as us and their body fluids also contain salt and water. In an average fish there are 14 grams of salt for every 1 liter of water or 14 parts per thousand (ppt). However the environment they live in rarely contains this same ratio of salt and water. In freshwater there are 0 grams of salt for each liter of water and in the ocean there is typically 35 grams of salt for each liter of water. …
UMITRON PTE. LTD. (Singapore, Co-founder/ Managing director Masahiko Yamada, hereinafter UMITRON) is making it even easier to access ocean environmental data with the release of the Pulse mobile application for Android users this week. Pulse initially launched for aquaculture farmers in late July with the goal of providing a high resolution ocean map of critical environmental parameters such as water temperature, chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen, salinity, and wave height. Pulse now has users all over the world who rely on the service to help them make informed farm management decisions.
Historically, access to ocean data has not been provided in real-time, at high resolutions, or in an easy to use format. Pulse is the first of its kind — an application that lets farmers easily check ocean water quality data the same way they check the daily weather forecast. In aquaculture it is just as important to know what is happening below the ocean’s surface as it is to know what is happening above it. All of this is possible thanks to new developments in satellite remote sensing technology and UMITRON’s commitment to bringing more data to more farmers. …
On land we take oxygen for granted, everywhere we go we have access to a near unlimited supply of oxygen to fill our lungs with. The ocean is a much different world where oxygen can be a scarce resource that can disappear in a matter of minutes and take decades to return. On a per volume basis water has much less oxygen than air. A high oxygen concentration in water would be 12 mg of oxygen per liter. Air on the other hand has approximately 250 mg of oxygen per liter. What this means is a fish needs to either be more efficient at removing oxygen from water or it needs to “breathe” in a much higher volume. Fortunately for fish they do not breathe like us, moving air into our lungs and then back out, instead water continuously flows across their gills either by swimming or by pumping it across. …
Each drop of water in the ocean contains life. Plankton, which is made up of algae, bacteria, protozoa and small animals is found from the equator to the poles and from the ocean surface to its darkest depths. The amount and type of plankton in a drop of water varies depending on the environmental conditions, nutrient levels, as well as a host of other factors.
Unlike temperature or salinity, plankton concentrations are not a physical parameter of water quality but a biological parameter. Plankton is one piece of the entire ocean ecosystem and it can change as a result of not only the weather but also the dynamics of the food web. Phytoplankton, made up of algae, is eaten by zooplankton, made up of small animals, and zooplankton are eaten by fish. …
At first glance the ocean surface can look like an empty and unvarying expanse of blue, but take a look below and there is a dynamic three dimensional environment full of life. The same as on land, life underwater is distributed according to environmental conditions. We find corals in place with lots of sun, clear waters, and warm temperatures and we find schools of anchovies in cooler, nutrient-rich waters where their food, plankton, flourish. A big factor in the distribution of these species is the water temperature itself. Water temperature varies based not only on your location North or South of the equator, but also the prevailing currents, the time of year, and the water depth. …
Pulse came together after hundreds of conversations with farmers all around the world. Everyone we spoke with wanted to know what was going on in the environment around their farms but the currently available suite of tools was lacking. Local weather forecasts were good for knowing if it was going to be a hot, cold, or rainy day for the farm workers, but that didn’t help tell you what was going on beneath the surface of the ocean where the fish were. Daily tide tables gave you an idea of that day’s water currents, but it didn’t factor in any other variables that might be affecting the water conditions that day. Sensors could be used to check some water parameters, but usually only at a single point and they often failed, were uncalibrated or required time to set up and use each day, often they would get left on shore. In practice farmers were not able to find a suitable source of information that provided them with important environmental information such as water temperature, salinity, chlorophyll levels, and dissolved oxygen concentration. Land farmers always know the air temperature, humidity, rainfall and the multiple day forecast to help them make important management decisions. All of this weather information is thanks to sophisticated technology that we all rely on to know when we should take or leave the umbrella at home. …
It’s been a month since we launched PULSE, and it’s been great to hear feedback from users on how we can keep improving the platform. A lot of exciting updates are in the works so do keep an eye out for them via our social media platforms.
In the meantime, we have received quite a few enquiries in the past month and put together a list of frequently asked questions. Here are the answers below!
Install Sustainable Aquaculture on Earth
Aquaculture is one of the most important growth industries in the 21st century. Our mission is to drive this growth by combining technology with aquaculture. UMITRON is finding solutions to difficult problems that will ultimately lead to increased food security and food safety for all. We believe fish farming is the future, and that with UMITRON’s technology we can accelerate the sustainable development of our oceans.
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