Last 6th of May the Marine Technology Centre (CTN) organised the third Consortium progress meeting of DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED Project remotely. 

During the Consortium progress meeting, Noelia Ortega, as project coordinator, briefly explained the project overview and the current situation.  

The progress of the project was exposed by CTN members, and it was evaluated work packaged by work packaged during the meeting. Ana  Juan, as Project Manager, introduced the WP1 in which the budget status and project implementation issues were addressed.  

Rosa Martínez, as Data Science Manager, explained algorithms improvements for the SICA standardization and results of last monitoring phase were shown regarding the fish activity and the waste of food detected contrasted with underwater cameras monitoring.  

The current status of the SICA devices deployed both case of studies was reviewed by Ana Juan as researcher in the project.  

Later on, Noelia Ortega continued the meeting by presenting the different business strategies selected to test in SICA commercial validation and explained how they were expected to be tested. Feedback from the status of Spanish aquaculture sector was received from the partners.  

Finally, exploitation, communication and dissemination tasks were summarized and upcoming actions with media were exposed for wrapping up the meeting.  

Progress Meeting 06/05/2022

The DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED Project, Demonstration project of a smart technology for monitoring the delivery of feed for a sustainable aquaculture, is co-funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund.

Last 15th of December the Marine Technology Centre (CTN) organised the third Consortium progress meeting of DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED Project in Piscifactorías Albaladejo facilities. The event was hold in a remote and situ manner due to availability of the attendees for travelling. 

Before the beginning of the meeting, an on-board visit to Piscialba took place to show real time SICA performance.

SICA monitoring during feeding process was carried out to show its functionally not only to all the consortium but also to the “7RM” regional TV and “La Verdad” newspaper.

Furthermore, commercial SICA recently designed and manufactured was shown during the demonstration on board. Latest design will be deployed in January 2022 in Piscialba and Plagton facilities. By that time, the nine months project extension recently granted by the European Commission will be starting to amend the delays generated by the Covid pandemic situation. In this period, it will be possible to fully implement the work plan and to properly communicate, disseminate and exploit the project results. 

After the on-board visit, the Consortium progress meeting took place and Noelia Ortega, as project coordinator, briefly explained the project overview and the current situation.  

The progress of the project was exposed by CTN members, and the progress of the project was evaluated work packaged by work packaged during the meeting. Jordi Solé, as Project Manager, introduced the WP1 in which the budget status and project implementation issues were addressed.  

Ivan Felis, as R&D Manager, explained algorithms improvements for the SICA standardization and results of last monitoring phase were shown regarding the fish activity and the waste of food detected contrasted with underwater cameras monitoring.  

The current status of the SICA devices deployed both case of studies was reviewed by Ana Juan as researcher in the project. In addition, Camar gave its feedback regarding the new Commercial SICA recently manufactured.  

Later on, Noelia Ortega continued the meeting by presenting the different business strategies selected to test in SICA commercial validation and explained how they were expected to be tested. Feedback from the status of Spanish aquaculture sector was received from the partners.  

Finally, exploitation, communication and dissemination tasks were summarized and upcoming actions with media were exposed for wrapping up the meeting.  

On-board demostration attendant and SICA commercial design

The DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED Project, Demonstration project of a smart technology for monitoring the delivery of feed for a sustainable aquaculture, is co-funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund.

Last 9th of December the Marine Technology Centre (CTN) organised the first Consortium progress meeting of DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED Project (Demonstration project of a smart technology for monitoring the delivery of feed for a sustainable aquaculture) at its facilities. The Project is co-funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund. CTN, as project coordinator, organised the event and invited the project partners to continue working on the project. The consortium is made up of Marine Technology Centre (CTN), Camar Industrial, Piscifactorías Albaladejo and Plagton (Greece).

At this event, all partners analysed all the phases carried out until that moment in every work package. The Project Manager, Celia Murcia, undertook the welcome speech and introduced the WP1 by explaining the project implementation, the current budget status and the partners workplan related to expense statement.

Hereafter, Rosa Martínez, as CTN Researcher, exposed the preliminary results, the tools developed for the SICA technology and its outputs of WP2 and suggested some improvements for the SICA standardization attending to the preliminary results and explained the tasks and deliverables for WP4.

To collation with Rosa speech, Ivan Felis, as technical coordinator, explained a scheme with the improvements for next SICA and the new designs.

Later on, Ana Juan, as CTN Researcher, undertook an evaluation of the WP3, specially about procedures carried out for the monitoring phase and the improvements that were made in deployment and testing procedures, explaining also how and when the next phases of the project are going to be performed.

Finally, Dimitris and Alex Bokas (R&D Responsible, Plagton), Mateo Ballester (R&D Responsible, Piscifactorías Albaladejo) and Anibal Gutiérrez (R&D Manager, Camar Industrial), gave their feedback of the development of the project highlighting the strengths and suggesting enhancements for next phases.

Project partners during the Consortium progress meeting

The DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED Project, Demonstration project of a smart technology for monitoring the delivery of feed for a sustainable aquaculture, is co-funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund.

The SICA technology (Acoustic Sensor for feedingf Control in Fish Farms) has been deployed in two aquaculture facilities, PISCIALBA (Murcia, Spain) and PLAGTON (Greece), in offshore cages for seabass and seabream. The project objective is to deploy the SICA in two fish farms to determine the feasibility of this technology.

The selection of two different farms allows firstly, to test the SICA under different farming techniques and environments and secondly, multiply the results that can be transferable to other countries and farmed species. SICA technology  is already installed and it has successfully overcome both technical and meteorological difficulties. One of the modules of SICA (data logger) has been installed in the edges of the sea cages in order to acquire data and transmit it to the unit control module.

The control unit module will gather the data from the data logger, apply the algorithms to study fish behaviour and make a decision whether the feeding process should stop in order to avoid fish feed. 

Shortly we will show the first results. Stay tuned!

 SICA deployment in Plagton (Greece)

The SEA (Sociedad Española de Acuicultura- Spanish Society of Aquaculture) organised the XVII National Congress of Aquaculture celebrated in Cartagena between 7th and 10th May 2019.

The congress aimed to gather the different stakeholders of the Aquaculture sector to present the last updates of it. The DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED’s coordinators (Marine Technology Centre) attended to the event and presented the objectives, main outputs and expected impacts of the project.

Pablo Ruiz (Technical Coordinator of the project)  and Rosa Martínez (Researcher of the project) presented the SICA technology (Acoustic Sensor for feedingf Control in Fish Farms) into the thematic block of Engineering and Technology. The presentation showed the results obtained of the SICA deployment in IMIDA (Instituto Murciano de Investigación y Desarrollo Agrario y Alimentario) facilities in controlled conditions before its validation in real fish farms.

Also, a scientific poster regarding the project was presented in the poster section of the congress to present the DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED Project. 

This event was a great opportunity to establish new contacts with aquaculture organisations to improve the inputs from the scientific community into the project.

Rosa Martínez, Researcher of the project

Last 7th of February the Marine Technology Centre (CTN) organised the kick-off meeting of DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED Project (Demonstration project of a smart technology for monitoring the delivery of feed for a sustainable aquaculture) at its facilities. The Project is co-funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund. CTN, as project coordinator, organised the event and invited the project partners to start working on the project. The consortium is made up of Marine Technology Centre (Spain), Camar Industrial (Spain), Piscifactorías Albaladejo (Spain) and Plagton (Greece).

The Project Manager, Celia Murcia Lorenzo, started the kick-off introducing the main objectives and expected results of the project that will be developed during the next three years. Then, the European Projects Office Manager from CTN, Elen García, presented the European Commission guidelines to comply with the EU requirements during the project.

Aníbal J. Gutiérrez de Uriarte from Camar Industrial and Pablo Ruiz (CTN), who is the Technical Coordinator of the Project, explained the demonstration strategy of Acoustic Sensor for Feeding Control in Fish Farms (SICA) based on the optimization of the feed consumption in aquaculture farms in order to reduce significantly the non-eaten fish feed.

Elen García (European Projects Office Manager, CTN)

Pablo Ruiz (Project Technical Coordinator, CTN)

Pablo Ruiz, Dimitris Bokas (R&D Responsible, Plagton) and Mateo Ballester Moltó (R&D Responsible, Piscifactorías Albaladejo) presented the Work Package related to ‘Deployment of SICA sensor, testing and validation’ in order to install the SICA technology in Piscifactorías Albaladejo and Plagton offshore cages for seabass and seabream.​

During the deployment of the technology at the offshore cages, the SICA will be improved to achieve its standardization and certification according to EU regulations. This was explained during the meeting by Aníbal J. Gutiérrez de Uriarte, representative of Camar Industrial and Rosa Martínez, researcher at CTN.

Apart from the technical improvements of the SICA, the consortium will develop a Commercialisation Plan for the market launch of the SICA.

Finally, María Bernabé, the Dissemination & Communication Officer from CTN presented the Exploitation, Communication and Dissemination Work Package, where the main objective is to maximize the impacts of the project and the dissemination activities.

Mateo Ballester Moltó (R&D Responsible, Piscifactorías Albaladejo)

María Bernabé (Dissemination & Communication Officer, CTN)

Project partners

The DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED Project, Demonstration project of a smart technology for monitoring the delivery of feed for a sustainable aquaculture, is co-funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund.

The Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) organised a joint event on January 29th in Brussels. The event aimed at presenting the 22 projects awarded within the Blue Economy call where each project coordinator presented their projects. The DEMO-BLUESMARTFEED’s coordinators Marine Technology Centre (CTN) attended to the event and presented the objectives, main outputs and expected impacts of the project. The Agency also presented the procedures and monitoring tools that have to be considered during the project to ensure the correct performance. Guidelines were provided by EASME regarding financial rules, communication and dissemination, progress monitoring and communication with the Agency.

EASME presentation

Elen García (European Projects Office Manager, CTN)