Inside Unmanned Systems provides actionable business intelligence to decision-makers and influencers operating within the global UAS community. Features include analysis of key technologies, policy/regulatory developments and new product design.
Issue link: https://insideunmanned.epubxp.com/i/643419
ENGINEERING. PRACTICE. POLICY. 47 unmanned systems inside January/February 2016 is the regions off a county's coast where a state has special rights regarding the use of marine resources. He then looked at the temperatures, depths and currents in those areas to see where three representative species—cobia, Atlantic salmon and blue mussel—could be raised suc- cessfully. He eliminated from consideration those areas that were more than 25 nautical miles (46.3 km) from a port as not being cost effective, leaving a total of 189,468 square kilo- meters that would work well for open ocean fish and mussel farming. "That's roughly the size of the country of Syria," said Kelly, "or, if you are more U.S.- centric, it's slightly smaller than the state of Washington. That's the potential area." The FAO also found that, so far, very little of that potential has been realized. "Nearly all of present-day mariculture takes place in sheltered areas, not offshore. Interest- ingly, about 44 percent of maritime nations are not yet practicing mariculture," wrote the FAO. "About one-half of mariculture production con- sists of aquatic plants, but there is as yet little production of plants offshore." With demand surging and plenty of room for new farms, the mariculture industry appears poised for a boom. The demand is going to be there, asserted Kelly, the former CEO of autonomous under- water vehicle maker Bluefin Robotics. Kelly is not the only one who thinks so. His firm has benefitted from venture capital and there was at least one potential early-stage investor in the WHOI audience. Though it is hard to say how many investors are specifically interested in open ocean farming, Angle.co, a website dedicated to startups, has 54 compa- nies and 974 investors on its list of aquaculture angel investors. The amount of interest is amazing, Kelly said, and includes investors and private equity "leak- ing over" from the agriculture sector. There are also "bigger-thinker, industrial companies." "There is getting to be more focus and buzz around it," he said. Rising Opportunity The market potential extends beyond the farms themselves to the sectors that support them, the experts suggested. Robotics and automation are already used in farms today, Kelly said, especially for feeding. When you consider the scale of op- eration at an industrial finfish farm it's easy to see why. Drones vs. Ducks For some animals the shellfsh laden ropes of an aquaculture farm are the water-covered equivalent of a buffet. Eider ducks and several other species are able to dive deeply for mussels and then, in the case of the common eider duck, swallow them whole. The winged thieves, which have been known to strip entire farms, cause some $2 million annually in damage to the Atlantic Canada mussel industry, reported Aquiculture North America magazine. Mussel farmers on Canada's Prince Edward Island, who lost their entire 2011 crop to ducks in just three days, tested small drones in November to see if they could be used to scare the birds away. "We're just testing to see whether drone technology can be used to deter the ducks from setting on to mussel socks," Matt Sullivan, executive director of the Aquaculture Alliance, told CBC news. Photo courtesy of Arpingstone, via Wikimedia Commons Whether the cage is flled with fsh or not there are structural limitations to how fast it can go. Failures in those activities are generally because somebody's got a date that night and they want to get to their destination and they push things too far." –Clifford Goudey, C. A. Goudey & Associates "