Ward Aquafarms is a 10-acre aquaculture operation in Megansett Harbor, on Cape Cod, MA where the effort is to improve the traceability of the firm's oyster harvest. Owned and rmanaged by a research fellow at the Marine Biology Laboratory in nearby Woods Hole, the concern is that while terrestrial farming is increasingly data driven, oyster farming is fundamentally undertaken the same way as centuries ago. Oysters are shipped and often consumed while they are still alive, posing a serious human health danger if not properly chilled from the time of harvest and at each step in their transit until the point of consumption. Bacteria that can be found in the seawater where oysters live, may be present in raw oysters at levels high enough to cause illness; higher temperatures during the shipment process may cause dangerous increases in baceria levels. Tracking the oyster from harvest consumtion is currently largely a pen and paper. process. To make temperature tracking more reliable, easier and precise at the point of harvest, Ward Aquafarms has installed a cloud-connected thermal radiometry sensor at the oyster farm as the first point in fully integrated system of related technologies tracking an recording the entire shipment until it reaches the final consumer.
