Aquabyte AI Fish Welfare, Lice and Biomass Monitoring

Aquabyte is a Norwegian aquaculture technology company founded in 2017 and based in Laksevaag, Bergen. It began in the Norwegian salmon industry, where farmers need reliable data on fish weight, sea lice and welfare without repeatedly crowding and handling fish in sea pens.

Its camera systems sit inside pens and capture more than 1.3 million images per camera per day. Computer vision models turn these into modules for Weight (biomass and growth), Lice (automatic counting and forecasting), Welfare, Behaviour (swim speed, tilt and breathing index), Feeding (appetite prediction with sonar) and Decision Support for short-term planning. The HYDRA 360 unit combines seven self-cleaning lenses, sonar and environmental sensors, while the Hammerhead camera is a compact option for submerged pens. More than 800 systems are installed with salmon farmers.

• Weight module: estimates biomass, weight distribution and growth from in-pen images.
• Lice module: counts sea lice automatically and forecasts lice development.
• Welfare and Behaviour: tracks swim speed, swim tilt and breathing index in real time.
• Feeding module: predicts appetite using cameras and integrated sonar.
• HYDRA 360 hardware: seven self-cleaning lenses, sonar and environmental sensors in one unit.
• User Portal and Decision Support: dashboards and short-term planning recommendations.

• Offshore marine cage farms in Khanh Hoa or Quang Ninh monitoring fish weight remotely for harvest planning.
• Seafood groups investing in industrial sea cages adopting AI welfare monitoring to meet export buyer requirements.
• Research institutes piloting camera-based biomass estimation for local marine species.

• Provides average weight, growth trends and weight-class counts that support harvest and grading planning.
• Reduces crowding, handling and anaesthetic use by replacing manual sampling with camera data.
• Gives early, continuous signals on welfare, behaviour and sea lice levels.
• Combines feeding, welfare and biomass data in one user portal with periodic insight reports.

Regulators and buyers increasingly require documented fish welfare, while sea cage farms want to cut handling and feed costs, driving adoption of camera-based monitoring. Vietnam plans to expand offshore marine cage farming, which creates future demand for remote biomass and welfare data in open-sea pens.

Aquabyte AS was founded in 2017 and is based in Laksevaag, Norway. In December 2025 private equity firm Vitruvian Partners agreed to take a majority stake, with existing investors, management and key staff keeping minority holdings. Its welfare monitoring system has been approved by Icelandic authorities, and Mowi Ireland and BIM began a trial in autumn 2025.