Article by Brynn Simpson
Deep Blue Aqua
Photos by Ruben van der Merwe
O
ur company (Deep Blue Aqua) has been
involved as a supplier to the aquaculture
and live-holding industry in Southern Africa
for just over 8 years. One of the areas we
deal with is monitoring and control on aquaculture
operations.
Back in the mid 90’s I worked as a production manager
on an abalone farm. My boss at the time was not fond
of automation, preferring manual operational and decision-making processes. When offered automatic startup on a new generator, his response was he would rather have the duty manager come in to the farm and
turn the generator on himself whenever there was a
power outage. His point was that things often go unseen when you rely too much on automation – particularly when your manager stays in bed when the power
goes off on a cold and wet winter’s night, thinking the
auto-changeover on the generator is going to click in!
There is obviously a balance between automation and
manual systems and one needs to have the checks and
balances in place to ensure all runs smoothly. Wherever
OxyGuard oxygen &
temperature probe in sump
we position ourselves on manual/automation scale, the
checks and balances are often provided in the form of
readings off a monitoring system. These systems and
their readings provide valuable information for the decision making process on the fish farm.
Monitoring systems will range from simple “manually”
operated handheld units carried around by technicians,
through to complex systems with a series of stationary
probes linked via wireless to a central computer that is
accessible over the internet.
At their most critical use, monitoring systems function
as alarm systems to alert us to emergency situations –
these have been common practice for years. Generally
they are linked to a GSM module that sends an SMS to
a cell phone indicating the alarm triggered. An example
would be notification that a pump has stopped or a
power outage.
Monitoring systems are used for early warning on critical and non-critical parameters. A variety of parameters
can be measured with probes (DO, ORP, Temp, CO 2,
Campbell Scientific pH probe
with cleaning device
Control system for solenoid units