Feasibility study on distributed flow sensing with inertial sensors in aquaculture fish cages

Currents flowing through aquaculture farms are essential to guarantee quality of the produced fish. Water flow through the fish farms transport fresh oxygen in and at the same time, waste out from the cages. Previous studies have shown that the flow speed inside the cages affects the growth rate of the fish and that it is equally important to measure flow conditions outside the farm and inside the cages. We demonstrate the usage of cost effective flow meter, hydromast, as a possible monitoring device for currents inside agriculture fish cages. In this study we validate the hydromast performance in the noisy environment and demonstrate in field experiments, that the device can be used to measure tidal currents online in fish cages with a distributed suspended array.