Injection vaccines are quickly becoming the method of choice for farmed fish species kept in high densities, mainly due to the long-term protection they provide for the fish. In order to ensure proper immunization, animal welfare, and sustainability, it is important that the vaccinations are done accurately, gently and swiftly.
Today the majority of fish are vaccinated by hand, but vaccination by machine is becoming increasingly more common in salmon, trout, sea bass, and tilapia farming.
Current manual injectors can inject one or two vaccines intraperitoneally or intramuscularly, but it is not possible to inject in two different locations simultaneously.
Delivering vaccines accurately and gently requires skill, and in many regions, there is a shortage of trained personnel. Machine vaccination offers a way to maintain consistency and precision, even when human resources are limited.
We will present the use of injection tools to enable vaccinations of large numbers of fish, while increasing production efficiency, improving sustainability, and maintaining a high level of fish health. We will also touch on emerging opportunities made possible by new technologies. One of the most promising is image-based data capture — vaccination day is often the only time each fish is individually handled. Could that moment also be used to gather meaningful information about the fish and its health status with the aid of Artificial Intelligence ?