Seafood Next #2 have spent two days in Trondheim and Selbusjøen getting more insight on innovation and new technological solutions for the aquaculture industry.

On our first day in Trondheim, SINTEF Ocean organized an event with presentations from Hans V. Bjelland, Leif Magne Sunde, Aleksander Lillienskiold, Deni Ribičić and Silje Forbord. The Seafood Next group learned about aquacultural operations, exposed aquaculture, robotics and automation, microbioal water quality in RAS and research on seaweed.

In Selbusjøen, we got a presentation on “Havfarm” from Lars Fredrik Martinussen in NORLAKS. Björgólfur Hávarðsson from NCE Seafood Innovation presented the work on innovation in the Cluster and performed an interactive session with the group challenging them on innovation structures in their own companies. Erik Olav Gracey from BioMar presented their work on innovation for increased sustainability, and Tor Magne Madsen gave the Seafood Next group insight on process and status for the floating closed seafarm FishGLOBE. Finally, there was a presentation from Øyvind Øverli from NMBU on the welfare of fish in intensive aquaculture and the understanding and caring for production animals in a rapidly changing developing industry.

Innovation and new technological solutions are important for sustainable growth in the seafood industry, and different players have chosen different solutions to produce salmon that they claim are more profitable, more sustainable and with higher fish welfare. At the same time, the Seafood Next participants were reminded that the biology of the fish always must be taken into account for enabling sustainable growth and development in the aquaculture industry.