Load the water body
Bathymetry and currents for the system.
How sustainable is my farm?
FINS gives you the answer, from the farm to the wider environment.
FINS models the effects of aquaculture across a whole water body, coastal or freshwater, including how neighbouring farms interact. Everything is worked out from the system's own depths, currents, and conditions, so siting, stocking, and licensing decisions rest on evidence.
Particulate waste
Where uneaten feed and faeces settle and how the sediment beneath and around the farms is affected.
Dissolved waste
Where the ammonia plume ends up, how far it spreads from the farms, and how much dissolved oxygen is consumed.
Disease risk
How pathogens released from one farm travel to others, the degree of connectivity among them, and what that means for disease.
10+
farmed fish and shellfish species, each with its own growth model
365
days of environmental conditions driving growth, repeated for multi-year runs
100,000+
grid cells covering an entire water body in a single simulation
How it works
From the water body to a map of each farm's effects.
Lay out the farms on the map, describe the stock and the season, and FINS works out what each farm releases into the water, where it goes, and how farms affect one another.
Place the farms
Draw fish cages and shellfish structures alongside any farms already there and set the stocking for each.
Grow the stock
Growth models raise the animals over the culture period and calculate how each farm affects the water.
Assess environmental sustainability
The results come back as map layers across the water body, cell by cell, ready to compare with the next layout.
What it models
The sediment beneath the farms, the water around them, and the connections among them.
Effects
Particulate waste
How uneaten feed and faeces settle and how the sediment responds: organic matter, sulphide, and oxygen, mapped daily and accumulated over the year.
Dissolved waste
How the ammonia plume spreads across the water body and how much dissolved oxygen is consumed.
Disease risk
How pathogens released from each farm travel through the water, the connectivity among farms, and the relative risk each poses to the others.
Rigour
Calibrated to the farms
Species, stocking, culture period, and start date are set for each farm, not taken from an industry average.
Conditions through the year
Water temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll, and particulate matter drive how the stock grows.
Compare scenarios
Every run is kept beside the last. Add or move a farm, change the stocking or the season, and switch between the results.
Who it is for
For everyone with a stake in aquaculture and the water it depends on.
Regulators
Assess licence applications and plan aquaculture areas against modelled environmental effects, including the combined effects of neighbouring farms.
Farmers
Choose sites, layouts, and stocking levels the environment can sustain, before committing to them.
Buyers
Understand the sustainability of the production you source or finance.
Certifiers
Check a farm's sustainability claims against a model built from its own site and production figures.
How sustainable is your farm, or your water body? Let's find out.
Contact us to arrange a demonstration.