Key Takeaways
- Data-driven tools allow fish farmers in a single region to connect, share data, and improve aquaculture management.
- These tools expand upon other tools that focus only on farm-level management.
- The tools are being piloted by AIPs in Indonesia and Thailand, but can be applied across other regions.
Following SFP’s Framework for Sustainably Managed Aquaculture, aquaculture improvement projects (AIPs) in Indonesia and Thailand are using two data-driven tools that bring multiple fish farmers and their data together, to improve regional aquaculture management.
While there are other data-driven tools and applications that help improve farm performance and sustainability by providing farmers with predictive analytics that guide decision making, most of these are focused at the farm level only. These apps do not consider that farms are interconnected and therefore reliant on shared and limited resources and subject to cumulative impacts and shared risks.
Looking beyond the farm level
The two new apps provide an opportunity for aquaculture stakeholders to implement best practices for aquaculture planning and management that go beyond typical farm-level management and consider multiple sites, other resource users, and the combined impact they have on the ecosystem in which they operate.
These tools, which are available in multiple languages, include:
- Aquascape, developed by Longline Environment, which maps and monitors aquaculture ponds and their environmental impact
- My Shrimp app, developed by FAI farms, which aims to minimize the risk of disease outbreaks by providing local disease forecasts as well as harvest forecasts and local shrimp prices.
A model for expansion
It is intended that these trials will lead to greater adoption of these tools across whole industries, and hence help to reduce cumulative impacts and shared risks in aquaculture.
To learn more, please see SFP's Aquaculture Technology Spotlight.
