Today, 19/07/2022, marks the day that we have been preparing so hard for.
Live. Testing.
We managed to fix all problems regarding our buoy the day before (with a lot of praying).
When we reached the site, we had a quick chat with the R&D Manager, whom we have been in touch since just about the start of our project.
Currently, there is only one active aquaculture farm in QianHu and it is for prawns. We were allowed to test our device for 4hrs there (we were lingering around the area for the whole duration) and everything went well (must be because of all our praying). During that time, we managed to get to know more about the industry problems and aquaculture in general.
GENERAL NOTES:
1. Massive deaths in fish farms happen very often. The reason is due to fluctuating water quality (pH, turbidity..) which causes the fish to get stressed. And when they are stressed, they fall sick. And when a few fishes fall sick, the entire pond suffers as the sickness spreads quickly.
2. They want floating sensors for fish farms. Most sensors sold in the market sink to the ground. Aqualoop floats!
3. The current system costs a few thousand dollars. And they have to keep changing sensors every 6 months – 1 year for maintenance. Each sensor head costs hundreds of $$. Aqualoop can help cut costs by being modular, open-source, and economically efficient.
4. It is only viable to have expensive sensors such as the ones Qian Hu is using ONLY if a farm has 20 ponds or more. This isn’t exactly an efficient thing because if we want to increase food production by 2030, the farms have to be distributed and decentralized. Aqualoop can help this by being cheaper; therefore allowing more farms to be built on small scales.