Ocean Super Cluster

In July 2020, Canada’s Ocean Supercluster awarded ThisFish Inc. a $500,000 grant to invest in the development of the next generation of seafood processing technology powered by artificial intelligence AI).

ThisFish has developed AI-enabled apps, called Tallybots, that can be embedded in our production and traceability software for predictive analytics and automation.

Seafood processing faces many problems that can be solved by artificial intelligence. Because of the natural variability of fish, such as species, fish size, seasonality, fishing zone, catch method and so on, seafood processors often have difficulty predicting production and quality outcomes, such as yields.

There are simply too many variables for the human mind to analyze. That’s a perfect problem for our new Tallybot technology. Think of Tallybot as a little digital helper, like the R2D2 of seafood processing.

As part of the Supercluster collaboration, ThisFish has partnered with Orca Specialty Foods, Hardy Buoys Smoked Fish Ltd, McGill University, York University, and Eurofish. Together the companies and research universities are collaborating on the development of Tallybots, programmed with machine learning algorithms, to tackle some of the toughest challenges in seafood production, traceability, quality control and cost accounting.

The project team expects to be one of the first in the world to embed artificial intelligence into seafood production and traceability software. Tallybots will analyze the large datasets created by ThisFish’s Tally software to help processors maximize yields, improve quality, automate costing and reduce data errors as well as noncompliance.

The project may also extend the AI technology to fishing vessels to improve catch handling, freezing and storage at sea.