Passive acoustic monitoring as a tool to assess feed response and growth of shrimp in ponds and research systems

Increasing availability of automated systems and technological solutions have been one of the most important trends in aquaculture nutrition for the past few decades as the industry focuses on improving feeding strategies through highly efficient automatic feeding technologies. Monitoring of aquatic animals is not a new practice but for the last few decades aquaculture has used feeding behavior monitoring as a tool to develop efficient demand feeders. While there are many devices available for the fish production sector, many rely on visual monitoring of individuals or populations, which disable its application in most shrimp production systems. However, production of sound by the mandibular occlusion has led to the study of passive acoustic monitoring of feeding behavior in shrimp and the development of passive acoustic demand feeding systems. While this technology has been available for less than a decade it has already been validated and adopted by the shrimp production industry. It is expected to continue being improved as more data is collected on both acoustic profiling and feeding algorithms. The objective of this publication is to present a detailed review of the information available so far about acoustic profiling of shrimp, the results of the application of this acoustic feeding system in production systems, discussing the limitations of this technology and what components could be improved in the future.