(from left) Muhammad Akbar Hardian, Dinda Febriani Analiyah, and Brigitta Violyna El Tito as the ITS student team who initiated ASTOR, an automatic offshore fish cultivation tool

ITS Campus, ITS News – As a maritime country with a sea area of ​​3.25 million square kilometers, Indonesia has tremendous potential. One of them is in the form of offshore fish farming. To increase this potential, three students of the Department of Marine Engineering, Faculty of Marine Technology (FTK) Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS), initiated a solar-powered automatic offshore tuna cultivation tool.

The prayer team consists of Muhammad Akbar Hardian, Dinda Febriani Analiyah, and Brigitta Violna El Tito. According to Dinda Febriani, a team member, Indonesia has excellent marine potential and needs to be maximized. “One of the great potentials that need to be maximized is offshore tuna cultivation,” she said.

Furthermore, this student, born in 2001, stated that currently offshore fish farming in Indonesia is still done manually. It takes about 15 to 20 people per day to take care of the fish farm. Of course, there are work risks faced, such as the high number of work accidents. “Therefore, offshore fish cultivation in Indonesia is not yet efficient,” she said.

Departing from these problems, the team chaired by Muhammad Akbar Hardian innovated to design an offshore fish farming tool called ASTOR. Namely stands for Automatic Offshore Aquaculture with Solar Energy. This tool is intended to increase offshore tuna aquaculture production. “Tuna is a huge potential that Indonesia has with an income contribution of USD 480 million per year,” explained Dinda.

ASTOR poster design, an automatic offshore fish farming tool created by a team of ITS students

ASTOR is designed to operate automatically, equipped with a monitoring system, feeding system, food storage, solar cell system, operational storage, and security system. (security system) using CCTV cameras.

Dinda explained that feeding in the system is done through a feeding system directly connected to the monitoring system. The entire system can work on electrical energy generated by solar cells.

Feeding by the system is carried out twice a day. The feed system will receive commands from sensors in the monitor system to issue feed. The monitor’s sensor is divided into two parts, namely the underwater sensor and the underwater camera. The two sensors are attached to the wall of the pond cage made of HDPE pipe.

The sensor in the monitoring system has been set to determine the right time to feed the fish. This sensor can find out the fish is hungry through the fish’s behavior. When hungry, the fish will rise to the surface and come under the cover when they are full. “Besides, the sensor in the monitor system can also determine the water quality by measuring the pH level of the water,” added Dinda.

According to Dinda, the presence of ASTOR will make it easier for anglers to control and feed fish automatically without going offshore because it can be controlled by land. This can make offshore fish farming more efficient and minimize work risks. Besides, ASTOR can also increase tuna production in Indonesia.

Components inside ASTOR, an automated offshore fish farming tool

Tuna is currently in the category of overfishing, which can lead to extinction. Increasing tuna production is needed to maintain the existence and cover the needs of tuna fish in Indonesia. “Therefore, tuna cultivation using ASTOR is the right way to overcome this problem because it can help increase fish production through sustainable production,” she said.

The efforts of the Mother and Father Prayer Team for approximately three months finally yielded terrific results. The team that created the ASTOR design included ten units selected from 50 existing teams as finalists for the 2021 Indonesia Ocean Expo (IOE) Paper and Poster Competition organized by the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) some time ago. “Even though our paper did not win the competition, our paper was awarded the title as the best poster paper,” she said proudly.

Through this innovation, Dinda and the team hope that this design innovation will help Indonesia better exploit the Indonesian sea’s potential, especially for the sustainable cultivation of tuna. It is also expected that the design of the tool made by this team can be realized soon. (far/ITS Public Relations)

Reporter: ion6