A shrimp farm in Singapore is using AI to help harvest more sustainably. Every watt of energy, every drop of water, every gram of food is optimized used to achieve more with less — all with the help of AI.
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00:00Harvesting shrimp in the middle of Singapore.
00:05At this test site, everything is running smoothly for the fully autonomous indoor shrimp farm.
00:11Two years after the start of the project, the team led by founder John Diner is now going to market.
00:18In the second half of this year, we will have 60 of these tanks.
00:23And they'll be in a vertical system, so they'll be four high.
00:28And then there's a robotic gantry that goes up and down the middle of that racking system.
00:33And that will grab the tank, bring it to the pit stop.
00:36Then we load it with the feed, and then it goes right back up into the racking system.
00:40And it just stays there for two weeks. No people are touching the tank.
00:43It's running autonomously the whole time.
00:46The farm is located in a port warehouse.
00:49The shrimp grow in these tanks under almost perfect conditions
00:53and only need half as long to reach the required size as in conventional open-air farms.
00:59A computer system uses artificial intelligence to constantly monitor and improve the conditions.
01:06Underwater cameras track the development of the shrimp.
01:09The team collects as much data as possible so that the AI systems can use it intelligently.
01:16This is a system that the more it runs, the better it gets.
01:19A bit like the Tesla car, the more drivers drive them, the better they get over time
01:24because they're softer and algorithms learn all the best decisions in every possible scenario.
01:31The price of these shrimp is already competitive, but the biggest advantage of the system is still to come.
01:39It can be set up anywhere in the world, eliminating the cost of expensive supply chains.
01:47Deliveries are sent to restaurants near the city just a few hours after they come out of the water.
01:53Customers can enjoy raw shrimp with pickled green chili and a little horseradish and lime.
01:59The main course is selling like hotcakes.
02:06So we always tell them where the prawns come from and that it's locally farmed in Singapore, which is different.
02:13Most things that are farmed in Singapore, you don't want to eat.
02:17The waters here aren't the greatest, right?
02:20So to have a raw shrimp or raw prawn, people are always a bit hesitant when we tell them it's from Singapore.
02:29Back at the shrimp farm behind the harbour in Singapore,
02:32John Diner takes a closer look at the algae filtering system.
02:37The different types of algae here enable the farm to operate a recirculation system.
02:45The shrimp farm has been using the same water for two years, hence the characteristic colour.
02:54So like tea is brown because of the tannins.
02:57This is a similar thing, but it's a different substance, but it's from the same family of humic substances.
03:03And actually fulvic acid is beneficial for the shrimp.
03:06Both the algae and the shrimp are regularly tested for diseases, but so far the farm has had no problems.
03:13This is a crucial difference to conventional shrimp farms that often have to use antibiotics.
03:19John Diner worked in the shrimp industry for 10 years before deciding that shrimp farming needed a new approach.
03:26One with competitive costs and minimal environmental impact.
03:30His shrimp, Diner claims, tastes even better than those caught in the wild.
03:37It's kind of interesting because you can learn a lot about their behaviour just through observation.
03:41But sometimes we see the shrimp, they kind of like to just float up with the bubbles and then go around and then float up again and go around and float up again.
03:48It's almost like they're kind of having fun.
03:50The team is already thinking about applying its AI farming system to chickens and pigs.
03:56The team is already thinking about applying its AI farming system to chickens and cattle.
04:01But first they want to breed their own shrimp instead of buying young shrimp from Thailand.
04:09According to the two founders, aquaculture is just the beginning for this new generation of agricultural systems in which the computer is the farmer.
04:19Yeah. Yeah, looks good.
04:24Yeah, maybe we can...