Harvesting fish is an inherently messy business, as with being in the sea, slithery creatures hanging around and all. Shinkei is working to improve this with an automated system that ships fish more humanely and reliably, resulting in a completely different seafood economy.
In many fishing vessels, fish are left to suffocate on the deck, fall and injure themselves, resulting in a greater chance of bacterial contamination, shorter shelf life and poorer taste.
A Japanese technique called ike-jime is an alternative, essentially amounting to a spike through the brain rather than a tedious, messy death. But it takes a certain amount of expertise and one person can only handle so many fish. That’s where Shinkei comes in: it automates the process so the fish don’t suffer and the resulting meat lasts longer and is of better quality.
When I last spoke with the company in 2022, it was developing its first prototypes of vessels to be tested in the unpredictable marine environment. The machine holds the fish in place, identifies the species and shape, and from there can determine exactly where the brain is, which it ejects quickly and accurately. This is the end of the fish, although it still needs to be bled, which happens immediately afterwards in an ice bath.
Founder Saif Khawaja told me that since then, Shinkei has improved its machines to be more reliable, moving from a water-based to a mechanical one, along with other improvements one makes when going from a prototype to a production unit .
The improved machines can also be connected in a modular fashion, allowing parallel processing streams, while the computer vision stack that analyzes the fish in the block is improved, with the addition of new types of fish.
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 real use by the end of the year. Shinkei is also working on a second machine that performs a second operation, effectively destroying the spinal cord so that there is no trace of the central nervous system—one step closer to a fillet.
A prototype Shinkei machine on a fishing boat, left. Co-founder Saif Khawaja, right. Image Credits: Shinkei
Khawaja sees Shinkei, and the automation of this technique and ike-jime, as potentially the beginning of a major shift in the seafood economy. It’s not just that he’s hoping for a more humane harvesting method to be implemented – there are a number of negative effects that could be far-reaching.
The thing about the seafood industry is that there is a huge amount of waste, no doubt in part because the oceans are seen as an inexhaustible resource. It’s not, by the way! And overfishing is driving many fish to effective extinction.
Part of that waste is that fish simply don’t last long as a high-quality product. We’ve all seen the signs: fish, purchase price, delivery this morning. Because tomorrow, that fish will only be good enough to be served grilled with sauce or in a salad, and the next day it’s compost or animal feed.
Consumers and restaurants accept this the way we once accepted that milk had to be delivered every few days because it went bad. When packaging technology made it possible for milk to last for weeks rather than days, it changed our relationship with it. Likewise, when in the 1970s, humane slaughter of cows was mandated by the FDA, this became the new standard, including the costs and supply chain changes that entailed.
A fish harvested using the Shinkei system, top, and traditional, bottom — showing tissue damage and contamination that will lead to faster spoilage. Image Credits: Shinkei
Khawaja hopes a similar transformation is underway in seafood. Fish killed through ike-jime rather than other means last much longer, retaining their peak flavor and texture for perhaps a week instead of a day or two. The whole deconstruction process slows down.
This means that a restaurant may not need to buy as much fish, a quarter of which will perhaps be thrown away, but will pay more for fewer, higher-quality fish that last longer. This kind of shift can cause entire industries to change.
For example, in recent decades we have seen a huge amount of meat processing work shift overseas. Khawaja reported that only one billion pounds of salmon were sent to China for processing because it doesn’t make economic sense to do it here where people demand higher wages.
If the value of an individual fish increases and it is easier to process it locally, this may make the economics of processing it overseas (kind of ridiculous to begin with) no longer make sense. Fish can be caught here and stay here, as well as all jobs related to the industry.
Higher value fish can also put negative pressure on overfishing. If a boat can make the same money on 700 fish as it once did on 1,000, that also changes things. Fewer vessels will need to collect far beyond legal or ethical levels just to survive as a business.
“This is a net efficiency gain for the entire supply chain,” Khawaja said. “I really think that in seafood the problems are particularly acute and many of these jobs are dangerous. I worked as a deckhand and almost died! I don’t want this to be a fully automated supply chain, but to remove dangerous jobs and let the skilled workforce create their new environment.”
The funding round was led by Cantos, along with 8VC, Impatient Ventures, Susa Ventures, Carya Venture Partners, Ravelin Capital, Red & Blue Ventures, Undeterred Capital and existing investors.
