innovation and funding
Funding the future Innovation and R&D are essential for aquaculture, but they need finance BY SANDY NEIL
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i�y years ago in 1970, off the island of Hitra in Norway two brothers, Ove and Sivert Grøntvedt, put 20,000 Atlan�c salmon smolts into large floa�ng octagonal cages they had designed and built. Their innova�ve cage design – inexpensive, strong, and simple to assemble – made it easier to feed the salmon, and created a barrier against predators. It became the world’s first successful salmon farm, and a founda�on of Norway’s aquaculture industry. In 1971, Norway exported 886 tonnes of salmon; last year it reached a record 1.1 million tonnes. Today 14 million meals of Norwegian salmon are eaten daily worldwide. Fish farming has come a long way since it began, when it was simply pens in the ocean. Today salmon aquaculture is one of the most technologically advanced farming systems in the world. From the design of the pens, to their loca�on, to how the fish are fed and handled, salmon aquaculture is a science based on decades of knowledge and precision, and the industry con�nues to build on experience to further refine the farming process for the benefit of the fish, the environment and the consumer. Innova�ons come through many avenues—scien�fic research, novel materials, and float and net technologies. The salmon farming industry has led many breakthroughs, evidence that when there’s money to be made by crea�ng and marke�ng a high-end product, investments in technology tend to follow. In the last fi�y years, many other innova�ons radically transformed the produc�on process in salmon aquaculture, in breeding, water recircula�on, and telemetry. What might the next revolu�onary innova�on be? And, when some bright spark has a brilliant idea, how easily can it be turned into reality? First, what is currently driving technological innova�on in aquaculture? Fish supplies 17% of all the protein consumed in the world, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisa�on. By 2030, the world is expected to eat 20% more fish than in 2016. Aquaculture will play a key role in taking pressure off our oceans, but it also needs to tackle its own environmental challenges,
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like the impact of farms on the marine ecosystem and the industry’s use of wild-caught fish to feed farmed fish. More outside-the-sea-cage thinking will be required to move the industry forward into its next era. In the words of one of America’s greatest innovators Thomas Edison: “There’s a be�er way to do it – find it.” One solu�on is fish farming offshore. As salmon farms move deeper into the high seas, they require increasing autonomy, using high defini�on cameras and submerged automa�c feeders, to reduce the need for human travel to and from the cages. In 2017, Norwegian company SalMar began opera�ng Ocean Farm 1, which it called the world’s first offshore fish farm. The pilot facility—68 meters high and 110 meters wide—was fi�ed with 20,000 sensors for monitoring and feeding up to 1.5 million Atlan�c salmon. Cage design is also being improved. In Norway, SeaFarming Systems based in Stavanger is developing the “Aquatraz” cage, which offers a high level of security and pollu�on control through its hard shell configura�on. In Scotland in 2021, Inverness-based SME Aqua Innova�on secured funding via the UK Seafood
The world “will need a lot more healthy and nutri�ous food with the lowest possible impact
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www.fishfarmermagazine.com
10/05/2021 15:01:38
