Automated fish filleting has been a part of the commercial fishing industry for years. While the machines that have traditionally been used have certainly sped up fish processing, they can also be wasteful and are generally  best when working with consistently-sized fish, like farm raised fish. Wild caught fish tend to vary in size too widely for a machine to consistently work. Even in consistently-sized fish, de-boning machines lose three to seven percent of the fish meat. Thus, most commercial filleting is still done by hand. Until now.

SINTEF, a Scandinavian research organization, is reporting today that the Norwegian commercial fishing industry, working with SINTEF, Norway Seafoods, and a few other companies, have developed an image analysis and recognition machine that uses x-rays to locate bones in a fish, and then quickly and efficiently fillets the fish using high-powered, precision cutting water jets. Norwegian industry experts are hailing the invention and touting that the machine will allow them to guarantee boneless fillets with significantly less waste, thus benefiting the industry.

Of course, no one seems to be talking about all of the workers the machine will replace (and what will happen when the technology is adapted to U.S. meat processing labor forces), or what the efficiency contributes to overall fish stock depletion, but, hey, it’s cool robot technology, so let’s roll with it.

This video posted two weeks ago on YouTube by Nordic Innovation provides an overview of the process:

 

Commercial Fishing, fish, Fishing, Norway

By Sid

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