44 unmanned systems
inside
January/February 2016
MARINE AQUACULTURE-MARICULTURE
by Dee Ann Divis
M
iles off shore, anchored in carefully
selected currents, the pens of an
open ocean farm can look like sub-
merged circus tents or huge geodesic bubbles.
Tougher than their close-to-shore cousins, these
giant operations are capable of raising thou-
sands of tons of bass, snapper, tuna and other
'finfish' while staying relatively close to custom-
ers in what is now a global market for seafood.
The remoteness of these operations offers a
number of advantages, including cleaner water
and potential economies of scale. But operating at
such distances poses challenges in even the most
benign environments. The fish in these underwa-
ter corrals will need tons of feed delivered daily
and their enclosures cleaned as well as regular
monitoring and in some cases medical treatment.
All of these functions and others are, or can be,
supported by robotics and autonomous systems—
in fact integrating unmanned systems is essential
for open ocean farming to succeed.
"It takes a certain amount of automation to
make (open ocean aquiculture) viable," said
Donna Lanzetta, the CEO of Manna Fish
Farms. It doesn't work, especially miles off-
shore, she said, unless there's automation and
robotics involved.
Rising Demand for Fish
Lanzetta should know. She is in the process of
setting up a multi-trophic farm 16.2 miles off the
coast of Eastern Long Island. Starting with one
enclosure or pod she plans to grow her farm into
a 24-pod operation focused on raising striped
With population growth driving global demand for fsh and an increasingly limited
number of new coastal aquaculture sites available, the emerging industry of open ocean
aquaculture, or mariculture, is poised for rapid growth. The scale of this new industry
and the distances involved mean open ocean farmers must rely heavily on automation,
robotics and remote monitoring—setting the stage for what could become the next big
market for unmanned systems.
FOR OPEN OCEAN FARMING
TIDE RISES
It's likely that
we're going to need
about another
probably 2 million
tons of live seafood
in the U.S. by 2050
and globally more
than 40 million tons
per year."
–Hauke Kite-Powell,
Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution
"
the