Seafood auctions start from 5:30am every weekday at Sydney Fish Market, where buyers inspect the produce before their bidding. Sydney Fish Market had been planning to develop an online version of its famous seafood auction. The challenge then was how to provide the same onsite inspection experience (see, feel, and smell) to the online buyers. In 2018, the Food Agility CRC organised two workshops attended by representatives from Sydney Fish Market, UTS research teams, Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC), Fishermen’s Co-operatives, NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI), and WWF. The workshops identified a number of challenges, including the lack of fish origin and quality information within fish supply chains, as important constraints to innovation and growth in the seafood industry.
News: Seafood Tracking and Traceability: from ‘bait to plate’ with blockchain
Technologies and Trials
The UTS research team proposed to develop a Blockchain enabled Fish provenance And Quality Tracking (BeFAQT) system to overcome the fish supply chain challenges. In this project, the BeFAQT team developed a wide range of technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT), e-eye, e-nose, blockchain enabled mobile App and online platform. The developed technologies have been trialled within the fishing industry. In particular, the IoT, Blockchain platform and App technologies have been trialled with fishermen to secure fish catch origin and supply chain tracking. The e-eye and e-nose technologies have been trialled for freshness assessments in Sydney Fish Market, where thousands of fish samples are collected and analysed. The BeFAQT system is being integrated in Sydney Fish Market’s online trading platform to deliver blockchain secured provenance and quality tracking data to the buyers.
The BeFAQT system enables the online buyers to achieve better than onsite inspection experiences, in that they can not only have the see, feel and smell experience, but also have access to comprehensive information in seafood provenance, supply chain tracking, and quality assessment. With BeFAQT system, online buyers can have early access to catch list, including authenticated fish photo, species, and sizes, with trusted origin, visible condition tracking, and objective quality assessment. The developed BeFAQT technologies support Sydney Fish Market online trading platform to achieve simplified process, transparent and trusted supply chain, shorter time to market and wider market access.
BeFAQT provides a provable way for the fishers to demonstrate provenance such as location of catch and proof of cold chain so that better quality product can be rewarded with higher prices. The technologies can potentially reduce paperwork with automated catch recording of species and sizes to the Sydney Fish Market online platform. With BeFAQT system, the catch provenance is shared immediately in the online trading platform, where the buyers can start bidding on a fish, e.g. Kingfish, whilst the fisherman is still at sea.
According to Bryan Skepper, Chair of NSW Seafood Industry Council, “the BeFAQT system has huge potential. Once successfully commercialised, the developed technologies can be extended throughout the fishing industry in Australia, and potentially exported to other countries, benefiting the entire fishing industry. The developed technologies can be extended to other food supply chains, such as meat, fruit and vegetables.”
IoT
The UTS team has developed new 5G / NB-IoT devices that are mounted on Sydney Fish Market fish boxes, which are used by fishermen across NSW to store and transport fish produce. The instrumented fish boxes record the locations and temperature conditions onboard the fishing boats at the origin and across the fish supply chain.
The developed IoT + Blockchain technologies achieve much more than the existing data logger technology in terms of information reliability, trust data sharing, supply chain coverage, and real-time data delivery, which enable prompt actions. Utilising 5G NB-IoT technology, these devices can achieve seamless connectivity for domestic and international supply chain tracking. Smart buffering algorithms are designed to cope with the limited mobile coverage in the ocean and in cool rooms. Energy efficient firmware is implemented to prolong IoT device lifetime, permitting the tracking of the fish boxes from catch origin to Sydney Fish Market.
In this way, the temperature and location of every individual Sydney Fish Market box can be obtained in real-time and then secured in Blockchain by Smart Contract.
E-eye
The UTS team has built a robust computer vision platform to automatically and unbiasedly extract essential pixel-based elements known as “image features” of objects in the image/video. Advanced machine learning is then applied to build AI models for fish freshness assessment, size estimation and species recognition.
This is the first time multi-sensor (IoT sensors, E-eye, and E-nose) technologies have been combined to address fish freshness assessment in an industrial environment. Novel designs and Artificial Intelligence (AI) methodologies are created in each of the technologies to address practical conditions in the fish supply chains.
E-nose
The UTS team has also developed machine olfactory technologies to assess fish freshness. The e-nose system includes an airflow intake system and control logics to carry out the automatic odour analysis. Novel non-parametric kernel based modelling and Hidden Markov Model are developed for data processing and classification.
Fisherman App
The Blockchain-secured Fisherman App records and certifies fish catch time, location, photo, and the company. The fish species recognition and size estimation developed in the E-eye system is being integrated in the App to achieve automated catch reporting. Traders and consumers can also use the Blockchain App to verify fish provenance and quality tracking information.
Benefits and Impacts
The BeFAQT system enables the online buyers to achieve better than onsite inspection experiences, in that they can not only have the see, feel and smell experience, but also have access to comprehensive information in seafood provenance, supply chain tracking, and quality assessment. With BeFAQT system, online buyers can have early access to catch list, including authenticated fish photo, species, and sizes, with trusted origin, visible condition tracking, and objective quality assessment. The developed BeFAQT technologies support Sydney Fish Market online trading platform to achieve simplified process, transparent and trusted supply chain, shorter time to market and wider market access.
BeFAQT provides a provable way for the fishers to demonstrate provenance such as location of catch and proof of cold chain so that better quality product can be rewarded with higher prices. The technologies can potentially reduce paperwork with automated catch recording of species and sizes to the Sydney Fish Market online platform. With BeFAQT system, the catch provenance is shared immediately in the online trading platform, where the buyers can start bidding on a fish, e.g. Kingfish, whilst the fisherman is still at sea.
According to Bryan Skepper, Chair of NSW Seafood Industry Council, “the BeFAQT system has huge potential. Once successfully commercialised, the developed technologies can be extended throughout the fishing industry in Australia, and potentially exported to other countries, benefiting the entire fishing industry. The developed technologies can be extended to other food supply chains, such as meat, fruit and vegetables.”
Congratulations!
BeFAQT was the Winner of 2020 NSW iAwards
Research Project: Trusted Fish Provenance and Quality Tracking System; funded by Food Agility CRC Limited
Learn more about our technology
[IoT-J] Blockchain-enabled fish provenance and quality tracking system