The commercial refrigerator/shelf looking device in the picture is an ikejime machine. Ikejime is considered the fastest and most humane method of killing fish. The method also leads to the best taste of fish because fish are killed instantly before their bodies go into distress and produce lactic acid and ammonia into their muscles. Ikejime involves the insertion of a spike quickly and directly into the hindbrain, causing immediate brain death.
That is, if fishermen know where the hindbrain exactly is for each species, and can insert the spike quickly and precisely within minutes of catching a fish, and have time to do so repeatedly. Well, that’s what robots are for.
Shinkei Systems’ machine is a combination of hardware and an edge detection algorithm, the engine behind object recognition in convolutional neural networks. Challenges abound. The machine operates on a fishing boat that tilts around even at zero speed. Apparently, “even in the same species, even with the same contour, the brain can be in a different location” as well.
Working with fishermen in Maine, New Hampshire and Cape Cod, Shinkei Systems seems to have been accomplishing the task on fresh-caught fish at a rate of one every 10-15 seconds. Moving forward, accuracy should increase and time to complete the task should decrease, leading to further opportunities.