Shinkei’s Humane, Quality-Preserving Fish-Harvesting Tech Could Upend the Seafood Industry
May 3, 2024 | 1 min to read
Shinkei is revolutionizing fish harvesting with an automated system that ensures a more humane and efficient dispatch of fish, moving away from traditional methods that often leave them to suffocate and suffer. This innovation improves the quality and shelf life of seafood by utilizing the Japanese technique of ike-jime, which requires expertise and can be labor-intensive. By automating this process, Shinkei aims to transform the entire seafood economy for the better.
Harvesting fish is an inherently messy business, what with being at sea, the slippery creatures wriggling around and everything else. Shinkei is working to improve it with an automated system that more humanely and reliably dispatches the fish, resulting in what could be a totally different seafood economy.
On many fishing vessels, fish are left to suffocate on the deck, flopping about and injuring themselves, resulting in a higher likelihood of bacterial infection, shorter shelf life and worse taste.
A Japanese technique called ike-jime is one alternative, amounting essentially to a spike through the brain rather than a drawn-out, dirty death. But it takes a certain amount of expertise, and a person can only handle so many fish. That’s where Shinkei comes in: automating the process so that the fish don’t suffer and the resulting meat is longer-lasting and of higher quality.
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