Åkerblå buys Oban underwater video tech expert Tritonia
Acquisition will help Norwegian fish health and environment company meet growing demand in UK and abroad
Oban-based diving and underwater research company Tritonia Scientific has been bought by Åkerblå Group AS, a leading player in fish health and environmental investigations for the Norwegian aquaculture industry.
The acquisition has been made by Åkerblå’s Gloucester-headquartered subsidiary Ocean Ecology, which offers a range of marine ecological survey and consultancy services for the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process, monitoring programmes and applied research and also has a laboratory in Oban.
“Tritonia’s capacity will help us meet the growing demand for our services in the UK and internationally and will allow us to offer innovative solutions to meet specific requirements,” Ocean Ecology technical director Ross Griffin said in a press release.
Åkerblå Group international director Arvid Strømme said: “We are increasingly seeing that customers and regulatory authorities are requesting video and images of what is happening below the surface of the water and on the seabed.
“Tritonia is well advanced and has developed new methods to visualise what we find underwater. This is carried out with the help of precise location on images and image streams which are used to build three-dimensional models using photogrammetry. The trick is to efficiently convert large amounts of data into models that can be processed and displayed with standard software.
“This provides an opportunity to further develop our services and contribute to higher efficiency and quality around everything that is to be examined and monitored underwater. We look forward to gradually offering this to the farming industry in all markets we operate in.”
Measurable 3D models
Tritonia will continue to be led by Martin Sayer, who started the business in 2018. The company will have special responsibility for the development and facilitation of technology and methodology for applied underwater photogrammetry, through research projects and its own efforts.
Tritonia carries out Structure from Motion Photogrammetry (SfM photogrammetry), the creation of scaled, measurable 3D digital models of objects or terrain from multiple overlapping images.
The models produce permanent records that can be measured in three-dimensions to much higher levels of accuracy than are possible using traditional methods.
Watch an explanatory YouTube video of Tritonia’s work here.
