The Poseidon robot aboard a fishing vessel. Courtesy of Shinkei Systems.Vegans, you can skip this one. California-based Shinkei Systems has built a robot that utilizes the Japanese ike jime method of killing fish, widely considered the most humane way to harvest the animal while producing the best quality meat. The process involves inserting a spike into the fish’s brain soon after it is caught — killing it instantly, and reducing stress that can cause the fish to spoil more quickly. While many Japanese fishers are trained in ike jime, the practice isn’t widely adopted in the US — and growing demand for humane harvesting techniques and high-quality seafood could generate appetite for the fish-killing robot. Shinkei’s refrigerator-sized machine, called Poseidon, is operational on three fishing vessels off the US West Coast. The fish is inserted into the robot, which then uses computer vision to identify the species and its anatomical information, spiking the brain and making the subsequent cuts in seven seconds. Shinkei, which provides the robot to fishing crews for free, then purchases the seafood and sells it across the US, including to Michelin-starred restaurants. Two fillets, or 12 ounces of fish, retail for roughly $20. Courtesy of Shinkei Systems“We’ve been fishing for 40,000 years and the tools haven’t really changed,” co-founder Reed Ginsberg, a former SpaceX engineer, told Semafor. “We’re still using hooks and lines and nets,” he said, adding that fishers could use advanced tools that also improve quality. Japanese firm Nichimo sells a device that stuns the fish to help humans perform ike jime, but no machine to automate the process. Several startups in Norway, a top seafood exporter, are also developing robotic systems to more humanely kill and process fish. Shinkei, which raised $22 million in Series A funding last month but didn’t offer a valuation, trained its computer vision system on various fish dissections done in its lab. Because the boats operate in remote locations, each machine is equipped with Starlink internet that transmits data to continue training the model in real time. |