Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The 2019 World Population Prospectus report by the United Nations, projects that the population of the world will increase by approximately 2 billion people over the next 30 years creating significant pressures on arable land and food supply. Utilizing land-based commercial food production will continue the pressure on soils and water supplies, already near a breaking point in many locations in the US and around the world. The improvement in conditions for many populations will also result in an increase in pressure on the protein supply. It is becoming more and more critical to expand the food supply options to implement large-scale ocean farm resources.Most wild fisheries worldwide are already fished at their maximal yield, ignoring the fact that many fisheries are managed at a fraction of their original abundance. Alternatives to capture fisheries for protein production are essential, including the need to develop aquaculture practices that do not depend on added feed (containing fishmeal, antibiotics or other additives) for efficient production. One well recognized and viable alternative is to focus more food production on sea farming, where shellfish and seaweeds can be grown together in the water column. This form of vertical aquaculture features a polyculture approach that focuses on the co-production of shellfish and sea vegetables, eliminates the need for land, irrigation, fertilization and herbicides and efficiently creates highly nutritional food. The approach also provides feedstock for other high-value end uses while at the same time sequestering carbon and excess nutrients from the water, all the while improving water quality and marine habitat.This project is developing the collective capacity and opportunity to address a highly-scalable and commercially viable development of aquaculture that can be transformed from a relatively low-technology, labor intensive industry that currently favors low-labor cost countries, into a high-productivity, automated industry with excellent export potential for both farm systems and US supplied seafood products. Moreover, there is a ground floor opportunity to build large-scale development and production systems for products other than food, that include seaweeds as the critical raw material.Three aspects of the equipment currently used in multi-species aquaculture have the potential to diminish the value of traditional farms, either in real or perceived value.First is the eventual consumer perception/knowledge that large-scale marine farming is introducing significant amounts of plastic (micro-plastic and larger fragment debris) into the marine environment with eventual incorporation into the food web. Although this may not pose a health issue for seaweed-based products, it certainly could have an impact for bi-valve and fin-fish production, and poses a potentially significant issue for the local surrounding environments and human health. A 1,000 Ha marine farm is projected to use between 3,500 and 5,000 km of plastic rope. Micro-plastic sloughing is now a well-recognized phenomenon and UV breakdown further exacerbates the issues. With the added stresses on the poly-rope surface during bio-fouling cleaning and during harvesting leading to increased micro-plastic waste, this issue will become more and more prevalent in the decisions of buyers choosing their seafood.Automating production of aquaculture farms is a significant challenge and opportunity. Using poly-rope that has changing properties over time due to degradation makes this aspect of farm production more difficult. Even though poly-rope is well suited to spooling and take-off, a fully automated production system is much more viable with a semi-rigid or rigid system. Being commercially competitive with the high wage-rates of the US will require continual improvements and automation when compared to the farms in lower wage-rate countries. With poly-rope, biofouling cleaning and rapid harvesting are generally treated as two separate and distinct operations, and care must be exercised to not impart damage.Marine mammal entanglement is a critical issue for large-scale growth of the industry. Already ghost nets and lost fishing gear are the primary cause of whaleentrapment, and this will be highly exacerbated as aquaculture deployment expands and some systems are eventually lost to storms and other events.The project team is developing a semi-rigid growing support framework that will be utilizing recycled carbon fiber (rCF) from aerospace and wind turbines to provide lines and pens. This semi-rigid system is an economically feasible and much more environmentally responsible alternative to traditional plastic rope for aquaculture applications, contributing greatly to the moral and commercial value of shellfish and seaweed on a global scale. Complementing its environmental benefit, rCF cable has specific properties (very high tensile strength combined with low stretch) which, in applications for shellfish and seaweed aquaculture, can provide operational efficiencies with sizable economic value compared to legacy plastic rope. rCF cable is considerably more rigid than traditional rope, thereby completely eliminating entanglement risk for marine mammals, an issue of increasing concern for whales, seals and sea lions, walruses, and other species. The added rigidity enables development of highly automated farms and farming equipment, including seeding, growth, harvesting, cleaning, and longevity that is not possible with plastic rope. Ultimately, rCF provides an opportunity for the development, centralized manufacturing, and sale of cost-effective, turnkey farming systems with high levels of automation. These opportunities will deliver cost and operational efficiencies to enhance the viability of shellfish and seaweed aquaculture especially in the US and other higher labor cost countries. There is also every reason to think that this model can be extended from shellfish and seaweed to the much larger finfish aquaculture sector. The goals are:To develop seaweed and shellfish culture systems that can optimize row spacings that can be 3x to 4x closer and offer higher yields than plastic rope constrained farms;To develop automation systems around seeding, harvesting, and cleaning that eliminate 90% of touch labor;To create farm systems that are adaptable to multiple species and can offer highly synergistic growth benefits between seaweed and bi-valve (and finfish) products.To provide the evaluation of environmental impacts (GHG, carbon sequestration, embodied energy) as well as analyses of the economics of farms in various locations utilizing these systems and yield/operations cost factors.By addressing farm automation, operations, and species optimization, the project will create conditions to greatly expand the industry, including farm systems supply. It will also set the stage for introduction and farming of species that have significant interest and value for indigenous populations and also have growth habit specific to their local regions. Even though the project will focus heavily on automation, the increase in scale of aquaculture across the US and worldwide will develop vast opportunities for employment in coastal communities hit hard by reductions in commercial ocean fishing.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
50%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
The major goals of the project are to develop and demonstrate an improved system for multi-species aquaculture utilizing recycled carbon fiber for cable and structural systems that can eliminate plastic rope and structures from farm infrastructure; can greatly enhance automation of all aspects of aquaculture farms; and can eliminate any possibility of marine mammal entanglement from active farms or from farm detritus in the event of mooring or tethering failures. Additional goals are to research and develop optimal species mix for farm fiscal viability, given the potential improvements offered by a semi-rigidsupport system that provides for very high levels of automation. The projected farm infrastructure system is anticipated to be equivalent or below cost on an overall basis (including gear replacement, operations, and personnel),and to offer improved yield potential (closer line spacing, automated shell-fish handling, multi-species optimization, etc.) The recycled carbon fiber cabling development offers cost parity with higher-performance poly-ropes, with none of the downsides of that material.These major goals are captured in the overall technical tasks/objectives of the effort as follows:Design and development of cable and related systems (anchors, floats, couplers, fasteners), addressing specific criteria of near-shore farms. Establishing technical feasibility encompasses:Research and develop an automation plan to provide for the boundary conditions and parameters of seeding, production, harvesting, and cleaning.Identify current farm labor and capital cost drivers that could be impacted and optimized through use of the system.Research and develop a suitable semi-rigid growing support structure, to include deriving load and stress criteria from existing cultivation systems.Evaluate and determine failure criteria, including mechanisms to provide for fail-safe designs.Research specialty attachment systems that can be integrated with automated seeding, production, harvesting, and cleaning.Species optimization analysis to include systems approaches that address multi-species containment and growth/harvesting requirements, as well as evaluation of best species combinations for the new support system. Establishing technical feasibility encompasses:Identification of limiting factors on yields, including reasons for species selection and management, and evaluate how a new support structure could be used to optimize their growth or provide for introduction of higher-value complimentary products.Research into new farm management practices made possible with the approach (to include freed up labor due to better performance of the semi-rigid system) and whether automation can enable additional harvest cycles and thus boost capital productivity.Determination of the potential for significantly closer line spacing and thereby higher density and improved productivities as compared to plastic rope.Research and development of scaled-up designs to evaluate logistics and handling, including procedures in the manufacturing shop, shore-operations, ship-handling, and farm-management. Establishing technical feasibility encompasses:Determination of the practicality of scaling the approach. This can include farm size limitations based on the capability to spool large lengths of the semi-rigid carbon composite cabling, cost factors for handling (shore and ship) large systems, and options for fastening and joining smaller modular units to assemble bigger farms. Unique assembly operations such as on-shore or tidal flat farm builds that are later towed to position will also be evaluated as this approach is not easily accomplished with a flexible support network. Evaluation can include cost feasibility and cost-optimization based on points of diminishing returns.Evaluation of methods for incorporation of additional species in the aquaculture farm mix, and the methodology for seamlessly integrating varying growing systems depending on species containment requirements and seasonal factors.The above Technical Objectives will provide a robust and data-driven plan for further development in the Phase II effort, with information of high value to potential investors in both farms and agricultural manufacturing. The establishment of this information will enable HCM to determine the optimum scale of production and to work with our external industry partners to address their specific needs based on local criteria which may be different from the Pacific Northwest.
Project Methods
The project will be a coordinated effort around both design analysis and experimental validation with in-field trials. Utilizing the existing farm in Hood Canal, WA, approximately 1/4 of the farm area will be set-up with a growth lattice for macroalgae and support systems for bi-valve cages. Design analysis of the stiffness of these recycled carbon fiber cables with attached load of their macroalgae will be run to evaluate options for cable spacing. The closest practical cable spacing (limited by operations parameters) will be assembled and deployed with seeded lines and cages. The lines will be placed in the water column such that currents and nutrients will be comparable to those over the traditional plastic rope sides of the farm. Growth monitoring will occur on a bi-weekly basis with documentation of the relative performance of the systems. Adjustments will be made based on local observations to ensure the systems are performing optimally and will be done in incremental steps during this Phase Ievaluation. Data collected will be shared with program partners and used to develop the scientific input required for cost/benefit/societal analysis, including for food production;determining specific areas of improvement and research and development needed in Phase II;environmental impacts both positive and negative; and to develop indicators and guidance for species optimization.The reduced data and results of the approaches will be written up for publication reviews and will be disseminated to other farm operators and cross-sections of the communities impacted. Farm design parameters will be developed and analysed to begin preparing design suite options if the system is used in different locations and with different flow and anchoring provisions. Design and analyses will be compared to existing literature and participant farm experiences to determine the opportunities for intellectual property protection.Data will inform a preliminary techno-economic analysis to determine thekey factors to address in moving to much larger deployments -this will be a relatively simple TEA at first and used to initiate a much more rigorous TEA coupled with environmental performance indicators to be worked up in Phase II in a detailed techno-economic-environmental-analysis.Experts in species selection and growth habiton the team will develop input for species selection and optimization as well as look into specific farm management practices that can be significantly improved through the use of this semi-rigid farm system, including items such as cage rotation, wet-dry cycling, and water column usage optimization. Their input will inform experiments to evaluate the hypotheses, and either new designs will be deployed (should time allow) or computer simulations used to demonstrate anticipated performance and experimental design for future work.