Fishing is inherently a chaotic affair, especially since you’re at sea, the slippery animals wriggling around and everything else. Shinkei is working to improve it with an automated system that ships fish more humanely and reliably, which could lead to a completely different seafood economy.
On many fishing vessels, fish suffocate on deck, where they flap around and injure themselves, leading to a higher chance of bacterial infection, shorter shelf life and poorer taste.
A Japanese technique called Ike-Jime is an alternative that essentially amounts to a blow through the brain rather than a drawn out, messy death. But it requires a certain level of expertise, and one person can only handle a limited number of fish. This is where the Shinkei company comes into play: automating the process so that the fish does not suffer and the resulting meat lasts longer and is of higher quality.
When I last spoke with the company in 2022, the company was in the process of deploying its first prototypes on ships to test them in the unpredictable marine environment. The machine holds the fish in place, identifies the species and shape and from there can determine where exactly the brain is, which it detects quickly and accurately. The fish is now ready, but it still needs to be bled, which is done immediately afterwards in an ice bath.
Founder Saif Khawaja told me that Shinkei has since refined its machines to make them more reliable, moving from a water-based spike to a mechanical one, along with other improvements that one makes when moving from a prototype to a production unit.
The improved machines can also be modularly connected, allowing parallel processing streams, and the computer vision stack that analyzes the fish on the block is being improved, with new fish species also being added.
And of course, the company has raised money: $6 million to help it go from pilot to production. The goal is to have 10 machines in actual use by the end of the year. Shinkei is also working on a second machine that will do a second job, essentially destroying the spinal cord so that no trace of the central nervous system remains – a step closer to a tenderloin.
A prototype Shinkei machine on a fishing boat, left. Co-founder Saif Khawaja, right. Photo credit: Shinkei
Khawaja sees shinkei and the automation of this technology and ike-jime as potentially the beginning of a major change in the fishing industry. Not only does he hope that a more humane harvesting method will prevail – there are also a number of far-reaching knock-on effects.
The thing about the seafood industry is that there is a tremendous amount of waste, no doubt due in part to the fact that the oceans are considered an inexhaustible resource. By the way, they aren’t! And overfishing means that many fish are effectively threatened with extinction.
Part of this waste is that, as a premium product, fish simply doesn’t last long. We’ve all seen the signs: fish, market price, delivered this morning. Because tomorrow this fish will only be good enough to be served grilled with sauce or in a salad, and the day after tomorrow it will be compost or animal feed.
Consumers and restaurants are accepting this the way we once accepted that milk had to be delivered every few days because it was bad. When packaging technology made it possible for milk to last for weeks instead of days, it changed our relationship with it. When the FDA mandated humane slaughter of cows in the 1970s, it became the new standard, including the associated costs and supply chain changes.
A fish harvested using the Shinkei system (top) and traditionally (bottom) – shows tissue damage and contamination that leads to faster decay. Photo credit: Shinkei
Khawaja hopes a similar shift is underway in seafood. Fish killed using Ike-Jime rather than other methods lasts much longer and retains its premium flavor and texture for perhaps a week rather than a day or two. The entire degradation process is slowed down.
That means a restaurant may not have to buy as much fish, a quarter of which it might throw away, but pays more for lower quality fish that has a longer shelf life. Such a change can transform entire industries.
For example, in recent decades we have seen a large proportion of the meat processing workforce relocated abroad. Khawaja mentioned that a billion pounds of salmon alone were sent to China for processing because it didn’t make financial sense to do it here where people demand higher wages.
As the value of an individual fish increases and it becomes easier to process it locally, that can make the economics of processing overseas (kind of ridiculous at first) no longer make sense. The fish can be caught here and stay, and so can all the work associated with the industry.
Even higher quality fish can have a negative impact on overfishing. If a boat can make as much money with 700 fish as it once did with 1,000, the situation also changes. Fewer boats need to generate revenue well beyond legal or ethical limits to survive as a business.
“This is an efficiency gain for the entire supply chain,” said Khawaja. “I really think the problems are particularly pronounced in seafood and many of these jobs are dangerous. I worked as a deckhand and almost died! I don’t want it to be a completely automated supply chain, but rather to see dangerous jobs eliminated and skilled workers create their new environment.”
The funding round was led by Cantos along with 8VC, Impatient Ventures, Susa Ventures, Carya Venture Capital, Ravelin Capital, Red & Blue Ventures, Undeterred Capital and existing investors.