Singapore's Underwater World becomes world's first RFID oceanarium

Filed in archive Implementation on May 28, 2007

You might love the acrobatics of fishes in the aquarium but among the crowd you may never get to know details about the fish except their shape and color. In order to increase your knowledge and make your trip more enjoyable Underwater World in Singapore has tagged its fishes with RFID chips so that people coming to watch them can clearly identify each species. Now next time whenever any of the tagged fish swims past the sensor one could view details of the fish such as name, species and other details on a touch screen.




The following species have been embedded with RFID tags:

Arapaima (Arapaima gigas)
Alligator Gar (Lepisosteus spatula)
Pacu (Piaractus brachypomum)
Redtail Catfish (Phractocephalus hemiliopterus)
Flower Ray (Potamotrygon sp.)
Shovelnose Catfish (Pseudoplatystoma sp.)
Walking Catfish (Clarias bartruchus)

A labor of three months and investment of S$30,000 was required for setting up the system. Some of the fishes tagged include arapaima which is the world's largest freshwater fish and pacu which is related to piranha. They also have plans of tagging sharks in the future. So get ready to expand your knowledge of the aquatic world.