Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:Maine Shellfish Devdelopers LLC (MSD) envisions and has begun toimplement closed farming of oystersand other shellfish at non--coastal sitesanywhere. This is a long over duebteaking awayfrom the ecological and regulatorylimit that hold the industry back even as demand soars.Our goal is to frachise the method nation-wide much as if a network of family-owned dairies, except that ours will be located close to population centers. This will provide readily availabe fresh and traceable seafod throughout the US to our main target customers, the white tableclothrestaurants. . MSD will supp;y the franchisees withfeed and seed as well as marketing services much as a soft drink company provides its bottlig plants with syrurp while marketing the product(s),except thatt our "syrup" will be large volumes of cistost effectivemicroalgae.The latter was not possibleuntil MSDand a nearby collabrating institytuion, the Center for Algal Innovation, made atechnical breakthrough nine months following the compleion of this Phase I . The wotk was fundee by a NSF Phase I award that overlappped this USDA Phase II project by three months. Th franchisees will become, in effect, a secomd set of target customers. Microalgae has potentially many used other than feeding shellfisj. It has eitht times more proin by weight than rice and as much as soy but unluke rice, sotycorn and wheat, they microalgae have amp;e omega-3 fatty acids and much more. An ability to priduce icostly nutrientscheaply portends their production by large companiesfor human food and animal feed. It seem probable that MSD/CAI will from a joimtly owned licensing company early in 2025. Those large companies wil comprise our third set of yarget customers. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
MAJOR GOALs 1.AutOMATED PRODUCTION SYSTEM: Somelarge, ciccular fish tanks alreafy installed pre-pandemic were found to be unsuitablevfor shellfish purposaes. We saved the tanks for wasre water management purposesand chose insteat to eadapt vertival tankage (see Objective 2 below) such as employed by some hydroponic and cannabis gtowers but for purely quatic purposes.. This made posible an entirely different automated systemwhereby a robotic grab hanging from ceilimg tracks could unfer computerized control be directed to grab and transport stock-loadeed, web-bagsfrom open raceways, transporting these to the wrkplac for processing and packaging. Once there the grab will alow them oysters to beemptied into a hopper.From there the oysters are to be washed, tumbled, counted, and weighed with some packaged for market and oth the remainder re-bagged and reurned to for more grow-out. The bags or sets of bagswill cary chipswithfresh data. Since there wil be a maually operated protype production in Year-1 and the full completed systemnot until Q-4 of Year-2(May 2026), we anticipate that AI will have progresssed to where its inclusion for data management will be realstic. With 4-stacks and 12-raceways per Unit and, ultimately five Units per 20,000 sq,ft builfimg (20-stacks/60-raceways), there will be tens of thousands of oysters povessed hourly. Conciveably, eacj stack could have a somewhat different diet, flow rate, loadomg ca[acity, etc. AI coul weighed the relative benefits and not only recommend changes but imp;ememt the best. MSD 's AI could monitor the information collected by each franchisee in a natoon-wide net andwill allow an extraodinart lovel of biological self-imptovement,all monitored atMSD's headwuarters. 2. SYSTEM DESIGN FOR LARGE-SCALE EXPANSION:EX[AN: A single priduction Unit consists of twp cleansing tanks, four stacks of three 20' fiberglass raceways each (see Objective 2 below), and a compiterized processing an pavkagng Woekpla plis a robotic stockmanagement and control system. With a truncated Workplace, we term this our Low--Vo9loume Modelce. It is rated to yieldharvests of 20,000 oysters per week. On a 50-week yeat. Thi8s comes to one millioipnoysters from equipment occupyiing 60'x 60' (1.0M.OY/Year). In order to expand rapidly, MSD will francgise LVMs nation-wide not unlike a nerwork of family dairies exept that ours will be located close to population centers. We will recommend tha franchisees start with one LVM but in a buolding -- that might be a rentedd watehouse - with space enough to acomodate four more LVMS and an expanded Workspace. We term five LVMs to be one High-Volume Model (HVM), the sole difference is that HVMs will confer significant economies of scale thanks to sharing the system and the staff. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES 1. ACHIEVE WATER QUALITY BETER THAN IN THE ESTUARIES: In fact, since we begin with man-made seawateeer and wil have in place a 100% recirculating capability,seawater at non-coastal sites will always exceed near-shore quality, this is achieved with a hybrid of installed of a shelfish-specificf chemo-mecanical system (SS-RAS) and conventional RAS . The former consists of multitrophic and aquqaa ponic treatments, one utilizina a well aerated tank of seaweed, the other by filteringout particulates to be utilized asa resuece to culture protozoansas acomp;ementary feed to microalgae (Subsequent to the completion of Phase II, MSD and colleagies at the nearbt Center for Algal Innovaion devised a means of uniquely culturing cost effective microalgae) -- see Target Sustomers_. 2. DESIGN A GANTRY-BASED STOCK TRANSGER SYSTEM:Much o:f Year-1 wa lost attempting to making an overhead gantry serve to halul out large wwire cyliners packed with oysters that were stood verticlly in the deep, circulat tanks. This was was ergonomically clumsy an, when transferring oysters to the Wwrkplacem un-safe, Instear, sraff opteted to adapt an approch employed by some Hhdroponic and Cannibis growers by stackiind three levels of 20' fiberglass raceways, .Amocj up was assembed, each 4' wde and 1' deepwith a cente divider so that the feed-loaded flow could reuclock-wise one day anf counter-clockwise the next, A single LM wiwill have four stacks with three levls each, hence 12- raceway thus one HVM 950M/Oy/Tear) would have 20-stacks and 60 raceways
Publications
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