IN A pleasant spot on Tasmania's coast, Barilla Bay Oyster Farm has been growing and serving oysters for more than three decades.
But are their oysters as healthy as they can be? The farm is about to find out. Some of the oysters are having sensors the size of credit cards tacked onto their shells.
Farm manager Justin Goc says the information will help him make better decisions. The farm is one of a handful of places that have joined a trial organised by Sense-T, a government-funded project to build a sensor network across Tasmania. The project aims to link up several types of existing sensors, as well as install new ones, to create an agricultural database.
Sensor technology is now sophisticated enough to be able to monitor an oyster's heartbeat. The new sensors will do this, and also track whether the oyster's shell is open, which provides insight into the oyster's feeding habits. It will record how deep in the water the oyster has settled, and what the temperature and light levels are like down there. Meanwhile, separate sensors keep tabs on changes in the water's salinity, and overall temperature and oxygen levels.
All the data can be analysed in real time, so if an oyster's condition changes, it will be possible to search for corresponding changes in the water. For the last six months, Sense-T physiologists have been analysing the sensors' output in the lab to figure out what combination of factors produce the best oyster.
"If we can start to use the data to predict how oysters have grown, that will be useful," says John McCulloch at CSIRO, Australia's national research agency and a partner in Sense-T.
For example, farmers must periodically take oysters out of their baskets to see how much they have grown. This process is time-consuming and disruptive. The hope is that a handful of strategically placed sensors could do the job instead.
Other Sense-T projects aim to make similar improvements with abalone, vineyards and cattle. "It's when you put it all together that the exciting stuff happens," says Ros Harvey, Sense-T director. "We can find better ways to use our resources – how to do more with less."
This article appeared in print under the headline "A happy oyster is a big-data oyster"
- New Scientist
- Not just a website!
- Subscribe to New Scientist and get:
- New Scientist magazine delivered every week
- Unlimited online access to articles from over 500 back issues
- Subscribe Now and Save
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
