Abstract: Many things are adversely affecting the seas and oceans to satisfy demand for fish consumption worldwide. As a result, aquaculture is growing fast in the food-producing sector. In a view to maximizing their potential, managers of aquaculture production facilities need reliable, real-time reports on system status and performance. In this project, we developed a low-cost, low-power remote monitoring system for open- sea aquaculture cages, based on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and Embedded Systems to monitor an open-sea aquaculture system in real time, for ideal and adequate fish growth environments. The Open-Ocean Aquaculture at the AquaMdiq Company currently uses 14 fish cages to raise finned fish in the open ocean. The cages are located about five miles offshore, making regular monitoring both expensive and time-consuming. Specialists and aquaculture agriculturists thus require a way to investigate aquaculture temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH remotely every day without actually visiting the pens, and in the long run, to control the sustaining and maritime operations by observing remotely. Our objective is to develop a real-time, accurate and fast monitoring system that can take over the role of the eyes and hands of an aquaculture farm worker. The main features are arranged in two parts: aquaculture cage monitoring station, and remote monitoring centers. The monitoring station measures the seawater temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH through the sensors, and consists of a remote data-collection terminal and intelligent water sensors, by which the temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH of the seawater is measured in real time, processed online and transferred via a GPRS wireless network. The remote monitoring centers connect the central server using the Internet. The seawater water data are communicated to the central server via GPRS wireless networks.
Keywords: Aquaculture cages, GPRS, Remote monitoring, Embedded system.
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