Aquaculture is one of the promptly growing and developing sectors of the world. Nevertheless, the intensive fish farming and large-scale productions brought degradation of the water quality and increase of infectious diseases in aquaculture. Hence water quality management is the fundamental factor to flourish an aquaculture sector. The growth of the cultured organism, it’s nutrient absorbing capacity, tolerance to infections, etc are largely affected by the water quality of the system. Frequent supervision of the biochemical and physical variables of the aquaculture system is essential to keep the organism safe from unfavourable environmental effects and for higher productivity.
Water temperature, DO, salinity, ORP, and the pH are the most important parameters of the water quality which should be monitored continuously for a better culturing. The traditional way of farm monitoring is an unfit method as it relies on the experience of the farmer and it also requires more labour and time. In recent times, with the support of IOT (Internet Of Things) water quality in aquaculture can be monitored in live. The system of IoT monitoring and wireless communication techniques are being studied all around the world to develop the country’s aquaculture managing systems. In IOT technology, Sensor probes are immersed in the cultured water for recording the changes in water quality time to time, here the maintenance of the sensor probes are significant as organic growth or microalgae can ruin the sensor. Subsequently, this will affect the whole lot system by making inappropriate measurements.
IOT is a globally accepted technology in all many types of industries. IOT is defined as a system that can transfer the data via the internet and it can be monitored and managed from any corner of the world in real-time. IOT system in aquaculture is composed of a monitoring station for water quality which is based on a WSN (wireless sensor network), a cloud processing platform, a meteorological station, a control station for water quality, and so on. If the IOT system is used properly we can gain extreme huge benefits from the same resources used that are used in manually monitoring the aquaculture system. The importance of this technology is the reason that the productivity is closely related to each step of the production cycle, this simple method of transmission of data allows users to know the status of the culture unit and helps in adjusting the quality of water timely.
Primarily, in aquaculture, the main functions of the IOT are the collection of data from aquaculture ponds, real-time acquisition of the images, transmission through wireless entities, intelligent processing, decision making, etc. IOT promotes a smart way of aquaculture by improving the production and operations of the aquaculture system with high effectiveness, and less labour-intensive. The workers in the large aquaculture units seldom fail to monitor the condition of the systems, however, IOT can monitor each unit of the system at constant intervals. Here, the sensors collect data from the culture units and update the data in the cloud which is a group of massive, dynamic, and special data. Through long term monitoring, the external environment of the species can be assessed and controlled which can help to improve the health and environment of the cultured species. Aquaculture is no longer limited to ponds, it has many other ways of culturing and all ways can be monitored through automation with IOT.
Slight variation in parameters like pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, salinity, and temperature might cause the death of cultured organisms in bulk quantity. It will be a great loss to the aqua culturist and pave the way for huge debts. The monitoring by farmers is inefficient and time-consuming, generally, the measurements are only done when any abnormal conditions arise and it will be very expensive and difficult to stabilize the whole system. On the other hand, the continuous monitoring of water quality IOT can avoid the persistence of abnormal conditions and would hinder any losses to the aquafarmer.
Summary
Internet of things technology is a proactive technique which would help the aqua culturist to control or monitor the farms to avoid huge destruction to the aquaculture. The manual method of testing water quality parameters is incapable because the parameters may shift in seconds and it could be very difficult for the framers to manage the problem. Even though the initial cost is a little bit high for the installation of IOT in aqua fields, there won’t be any further cost for maintenance. Through the installation of IOT, time, energy labour-intensive, money loss in the future can be decreased ensures the health and growth of aquatic species by minimizing the chance of risk from environmental fluctuations. It helps to improve productivity and foreign trade simultaneously increase the GDP of the particular nation. In total, automation using the internet in aquaculture is a cost-effective and efficient technology for better yield.
Reference
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