This Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase II project will catapult open ocean mariculture far offshore, away from the restrictions caused by competing user groups, site lease requirements and mooring restrictions, by developing the technology for Velella ? an untethered, open ocean regional drifter cage. Since 2005, Kona Blue?s open ocean mariculture operation has produced up to 500T per annum of Kona Kampachi, with negligible environmental impacts, from a 90 acre site. Growth and investment are constrained by site limitations. Mariculture expansion in U.S. waters is similarly limited by regulatory constraints for moored structures, and the technological challenges of operating further offshore. The Velella Project is developing essential technologies for drifter net-pens that can be entrained in regional ocean eddies. This will allow increased scale and reduced labor requirements, and greater farm profitability. Phase II will also expand eddy predictive capabilities, and launch a Velella beta-system maiden voyage.
The broader impacts of this research are to be accrued through benefits to the environment, coastal economies and public health. The oceans are in deep trouble; over 90% of the ocean?s larger predator fish are gone, and over a quarter of fish stocks have ?collapsed?. Heavily exploited or overfished wild stocks cannot meet the growing global demand for healthful seafood. Still, increased seafood consumption is imperative for American consumers? health. Inshore and onshore aquaculture offer only limited expansion opportunities, or lower-value products. Open ocean mariculture can meet this burgeoning demand, improve product quality and reduce pressure on wild stocks. Overcoming the industry constraints requires highly-automated husbandry systems, and demonstration of a scalable production model for deep water that meets current regulations. This research could significantly expand sustainable, eco-friendly mariculture in U.S. waters, without environmental impacts or user-group conflicts associated with other site-constrained aquaculture. Increased automation can increase production volumes and improve profitability, fish health and worker safety offshore. Increased domestic mariculture could reduce America?s $9 billion seafood trade deficit.
In the face of ever-increasing global demand for seafood and the collapse of many wild fisheries, aquaculture provides the only realistic solution for increasing the volume and reliability for future fish production.The goal of Kampachi Farms’ Velella Project is to explore and develop techniques and technologies to support the sustainable expansion of deep-water offshore mariculture. The Velella Beta-test during the SBIR Phase II was the world's first test of an unanchored net pen for culture of fish. A 22 ft diameter Aquapod(TM) fish cage was stocked with 2,000 kampachi (Seriola rivoliana), which were fed from the 65 ft steel-hulled S.S. Machias, which acted as the tender vessel. The Beta-test was the recipient of one of TIME Magazine's "25 Best Inventions of the Year" for 2012. This trial demonstrated the phenomenal improvements in biological performance that can be achieved in true open ocean culture systems, with growth rate almost twice as fast as in moored net pens, better feed conversion ratios and superrb survival rates. However, this trial also underscored the technological difficulties of bringing these benefits to fruition in an unanchored "drifter cage" array, with difficulties predicting future directions of eddy movements, difficulties pushing data through commercial satellite connections, and the challenge of reducing drag ont he net pen so that it would be economical to tow. The Phase IIB research sought to resolve these difficulties and bring the concept of deepwater open-ocean farming closer to commercial viability by moving anchoring the culture system using a Single Point Mooring array (the Gamma-test), while further investigating the physiological and biological mechanisms behind the improved performance observed during the beta-test. The Gamma trial was deployed onto a single-point mooring, in 6,000 ft of water, some 6 Nm offshore of the Big Island of Hawaii. The same net pen was stocked with the same species of fish, and fed the same diet, but this time the processes were completely automated, with remote command-and-control (C2) tasks through a wireless bridge to a shore-based internet connection. These fish suffered some early feed deprivation, before the remote C2 became fully functional, but by the conclusion of the grow-out cycle (within a mere 6 months of stocking the fish), the support crew only needed to visit the feed barge on a weekly basis to top up the feed and the fuel. Additional land-based trials during Phase II B attempted to elucidate the potential reasons for improved performance of the fish offshore, by studying fish growth rates and metabolic rates at different current speeds, and by comparing effects of stress levels on fish performance. No clear answer was evident. Overall, however, this research now opens up the potential for expanded "over-the-horizon" open ocean mariculture - in deeper water, further offshore, where there is negligible potential environmental impact, and de minimus negative interaction with other ocean user groups. By proving this technology, blazing this permiting pathway, and increasing the profile of this industry in the US, this project should therefore add to the growing momentum for development of commercial aquaculture in US Federal waters. It also offers a tremendous opportunity for US companies to now apply these technologies to aquaculture developments throughout the oceans of the world.
