Cyber-physical seafood systems: Intelligent and optimized green manufacturing for marine co-products

We typically think of seafood as delicious shellfish and fillets, but the enormous range of harvested animals from Aotearoa’s aquaculture and fisheries also represents a complex mixture of molecules with uses far beyond food. Many of these molecules have special properties making them valuable commercially, including as products for human/animal health. They range from big structural proteins for biomedical scaffolds, through to anti-inflammatory omega-3s, and blood pressure-lowering or anti-aging peptides. The good news is that these molecules are often found in by-products and by-catch, so we can grow our seafood industry without affecting seafood availability, or needing more fish to be caught - a genuine vision of kaitiakitanga. The challenge is how to extract them all out of really diverse marine organisms, containing different types and combinations of the molecules. Current technology can’t do this. We need new technology that is economical, uses environmentally friendly processes with low emissions and the biggest challenge, doesn’t destroy one component while recovering another. We need factories that can change how they operate to match raw materials with the products we want. Right now, we can assess composition using chemical testing, but this takes a long time. For our responsive factories to work, we need analysis in real time as material arrives or changes. The Cyber-Marine research programme will develop AI-integrated sensor systems able to immediately tell us what’s in the raw material, then use the information to direct optimised processing. This will require development of new low-energy extraction technologies that use the differences in properties of molecules to sequentially separate the components. While this programme centres on seafood, the technology will have application across the primary-production sectors and beyond.