A contest hosted by a Cape Breton, N.S., seafood company has come up with some innovative solutions for problems facing the fishing industry.
Louisbourg Seafoods launched the Sea++ competition earlier this year. Product development manager Adam Mugridge says the name is a play on the programming language C++.
He says the original intent was to tap into the growing local tech sector.
“So let’s have a rapid business competition,” he said. “Bring in some creative thinkers, innovative thinkers, and see if that can solve some of the problems we have in fisheries.”
The company worked with contestants to help develop their ideas, and on Sunday night during a Dragon’s Den-style session a panel of local judges chose a winner.
Lawrence Taylor, a biologist working with the Bras d’Or Institute, won the contest, claiming the $5,000 top prize.
His idea came out of one of the research projects he’s worked on which involved running a video camera across the bottom of a scallop aquaculture operation to gather data on the stock.
Taylor says processors are using machine-vision technology to grade seafood on the assembly line. His pitch was to take the existing technology and mine it for biological information.
“That data actually is measuring all of the elements of an individual animal, whether it’s a scallop or a fish,” he said. “It will measure its length, width, calculate its circumference, and even give you a volume, and so that’s all biologically relevant data.”
Five other finalists will receive $1,000 each.
Adam Mugridge says those pitches included a look at how to deal with waste produced by fin fish farms and an app that would connect local buyers with local suppliers.
He says Louisbourg Seafoods hopes to continue to work with Taylor and other finalists to develop their ideas further.
2016 CBC/Radio-Canada