An adaptive method for fish growth prediction with empirical knowledge extraction

Abstract

Fish growth prediction provides important information for optimising production in aquaculture. Fish usually exhibit different growth characteristics due to the variations in the environment, the equipment used in different fish workshops and inconsistent application by operators of empirical rules varying from one pond to another. To address this challenge, the aim of this study is to develop an adaptive fish growth prediction method in response to feeding decision. Firstly, the practical operational experience in historical feeding decisions for different fish weights is extracted to establish the feeding decision model. Then, a fish weight prediction model is established by regression analysis methods based on historical fish production data analysis. The feeding decision model is integrated as the input information of the fish weight prediction model to obtain fish weight prediction. Furthermore, an adaptive fish growth prediction strategy is proposed by continuously updating model parameters using new measurements to adapt to specific characteristics. The proposed adaptive fish growth prediction method with empirical knowledge extraction is evaluated by the collected production data of spotted knifejaw (Oplegnathus punctatus). The results show that established models can achieve a good balance between goodness-of-fit and model complexity, and the adaptive prediction method can adapt to specific fish pond’s characteristics and provide a more effective way to increase fish weight prediction accuracy. The proposed method provides an important contribution to achieving adaptive fish growth prediction in a real time from the view of aquaculture practice for spotted knifejaw.