Norway deploys 3,500 AI laser robots to zap lice off salmon
What's the deal? Norway-based Stingray Marine Solutions now runs more than 3,500 AI-guided laser robots in salmon pens along the country's coast, protecting over 112 million fish from sea lice. The Oslo firm disclosed the figures in its latest annual report.
How it works: Each underwater unit uses cameras, LED lighting, and machine vision to spot lice on passing salmon, then fires a laser pulse — up to five times per second — to kill the parasite without removing the fish from the water. The captured images also feed health data such as fish weight, injuries, and maturity.
Why now? Sea lice are a costly, tightly regulated problem for Norwegian farms, where lice counts must be reported weekly and resistance to several medicines is widespread. Traditional fixes — chemical baths, warm water, or mechanical currents — stress fish and raise mortality.
The scale: Stingray's fleet has grown fast, from over 2,500 units in 2025, with the number of fish protected rising from 48.2 million in 2023 to 112.2 million in 2025. That covers 20-25% of Norway's farmed salmon.
Does it work? In 2025, farms using the system needed lice treatment in 9.4% of weeks, compared with 16.3% at farms without it. The company positions the robots as prevention, keeping lice numbers low before they spread.
What could go wrong? The system is confined to individual pens, so lice in darker or murkier areas outside the patrol zone may go untargeted. Upfront costs are a hurdle, and the performance figures come largely from Stingray's own reporting.
The signal: The deployment lands as the industry shifts hard toward non-drug methods — MowiDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s 2026 handbook says 88% of Norway's lice treatments in 2025 were non-medicinal. Stingray's scale makes it a notable commercial test of whether machine vision can control lice with less harm, though it is far from solving the problem.
Read more: tomshardware.com
Image credit: "Salmon Farm" by mikecogh, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/), via https://www.flickr.com/photos/89165847@N00/54257326529
