Cognizant and Tidal partner to scale fish-tracking platform

IT consultancy Cognizant has partnered with Tidal, an ocean conservation project within Alphabet’s semi-secret R&D organization “X,” on bringing Tidal’s platform to the wider aquaculture market.

The collaboration, which was announced on Wednesday, will leverage Cognizant’s software and systems integration expertise to expand Tidal’s reach beyond its current select pilot partners.

Tidal has for the last five years worked with fish farmers to develop its solution, which monitors and collects data on fish behavior and welfare. The solution includes a system of underwater cameras, sensors, machine perception tools, and software designed to interpret complex ocean environments. Tidal’s AI has been trained on 8 billion underwater observations of fish behavior across 900 terabytes of operational video.

The solution can be used to help farmers detect when fish are hungry to increase feeding precision and reduce food waste, which is a significant source of carbon emissions. Farmers can also analyze data on fish populations, fishing patterns, and environmental conditions to optimize fishing strategies.

Longer term, Cognizant and Tidal will work together to explore ways to apply the platform to impact other industries that depend on ocean insights, such as transportation and energy.

“To preserve ocean health, we need to take an innovation-driven and collaborative approach with aquaculture companies and other businesses that make their living on and in the ocean,” said Tidal founder and CEO, Neil Davé. “Through our collaboration with Cognizant, we hope to build on our initial success in the Norwegian aquaculture industry, and eventually expand to other sectors of the Blue Economy to make a meaningful impact in ocean health and global decarbonization.”

Cognizant also on Wednesday announced the launch of its ocean business group, which aims to drive sustainability, efficiency, and growth initiatives for clients in aquaculture, shipping, marine transportation, and offshore energy.

“With digital technology ocean industries can not only become more resilient and future-proof in the face of a more unpredictable and rapidly changing environment, but they can help make oceans healthier and address humanity’s biggest problems – from food production to renewable energy to climate change,” said Stig Martin Fiskå, global head of Cognizant Ocean. “We welcome this important collaboration with Tidal to work together with clients to support their holistic, systems-level change.”