Where are we headed?
By Chri Campbell

In the early '90s, I was told that prime attributes in fish farm workers were “a strong back, dive ticket and weak mind.” In the era of the 55 lb. feed bag, the concept of bulk feed delivery and camera-monitored, centralized feeding were barely imagined.

If we reflect back now, we can hardly believe just how much work it was in the early days. So if we look forward another 5-10 years, can we imagine the further transformation of the industry?

This thought process was inspired recently by walking from some of the oldest cage systems in the industry to the newest catamaran cage systems. And even the traditional cage systems are barely recognizable in that they have been adapted to “100-by” nets; they now have massively stronger, antifoulant-treated nets; predator nets attached to the outside of the system and there are pneumatic feedpipes running along walkways. In fact they have served as the prototype for what the industry logically needs for the long-term.

Are the “Cats” or the new massive walkway cage systems the answer? Well they certainly are a huge step in that direction and I think they give us a hint of the future, but more of that in a minute.

Forces of change
The aquaculture industry, like all farming, tends to “make do” until forced to make a change. However, aquaculture may now be at a point where that change has to occur. Narrower margins mean that investment decisions have to be made for the long-term and approaches and equipment must be designed and chosen to last many production cycles. The narrow margins mean that the industry must focus on risk minimization in order to increase productivity and this means that equipment and approaches must be chosen to minimize waste or losses and to allow production to become an efficient routine. But the other force at work in a maturing aquaculture industry is the adoption of ISO standards and codes of practice. These tend to drive industry improvement into a “failsafe” mode by adoption of processes, technology and infrastructure that increase margins of security.

Systems approach
The industry was, by and large, started by biologists, but this upcoming era is likely to be one dominated by an integration of disciplines in a systems engineering phase. This transition will be characterized by the move to incorporate many of the “temporary” and “nuisance” aspects of farming into routine operations and technology: the installation of farm-sheathing tarps and airlifts has been treated as a temporary measure, despite regular seasonal deployment against plankton blooms for many years; the use of divers to collect morts and inspect nets is risky, expensive and disruptive, and is probably not the best long-term solution. A systems approach will see these needs incorporated right from the design of the next generation of technology.
So what might the next generation salmon farm look like? The “Cat” systems may be a hint of what is to come: they are serviced with 220 and 110v power, compressed air, water and drainage throughout the system. They integrate feed distribution pipes; they have built in net changing equipment; and they are built to have an operating life of several decades. However, they still need better integration with power generation, fuel and water storage, tarp and blower, mort recovery and net protection and inspection requirements.

Long life expectancy
When we have these new systems, they will remind us more of the long life and self-reliance of ships rather than flotation of farms in nearshore waters. Perhaps the most obvious difference will be the continued trend towards equipment designed with a life expectancy of 25-50 years. With systems that reduce the labour in most farm tasks, and eliminate a lot of time-consuming activity, our farmers will shift their focus toward monitoring and managing production with less emphasis on managing feeding. Management of fish growth will allow production to focus on sales opportunities, perhaps by varying diets and growth regimes to suit particular market niches.

Environmental management
The farms will be practising integrated environmental management, so there will probably be composting of any waste on the seafloor, surrounding rafts of seaweed production to utilize soluble wastes and mussels to harvest phytoplankton. Information technology will mean that all farms are continuously monitoring the regional oceanography and be able to use ocean forecasts to plan feeding, algal protection and other operations. Remote sensing and robotics will continuously monitor net integrity, biomass of fish and possibly fish health and activity levels. Feedback from the fish will control feeding systems to eliminate wasted feed.
It seems likely that finfish farms will actually produce several species, perhaps even net-cleaning fish in the same cages as salmon. Certainly, similar technology will be used for species such as cod and sablefish.

Fish health in 2010
In the early finfish farming days, antibiotics were the only line of defense in health management – now largely replaced by vaccination – we should now expect selective breeding of disease resistant fish and shellfish, and health-promoting diets, to further improve the health of our livestock.
Processing will adopt all the advances in meat and seafood processing by using remote sensing for quality control, product streaming and optimizing product value. The trend to mechanical filleting, deboning, skinning and portioning will dominate finfish production. The rapid growth in sales of ready-to-cook product, and prepared salmon meat products, will be replacing chicken and other meats for many more supermarket clients.

Shellfish advances
So what would the shellfish industry look like? The move to off-bottom culture is already leading to a focus on materials-handling. Most of the product weight is in the shell, and traditional hand labour limits the scale of all shellfish operations. The mechanization developed by the mussel industry is now the driving force in some other shellfish farms. Mechanization of tray-handling in raft culture of oysters will see specialized crews and equipment grading and tumbling, removing fouling and harvesting.

Environmental monitoring will provide inputs into stocking and splitting decisions as well as forecasting algal or bacterial impacts that may limit harvests. Remote sensing will allow meat growth monitoring on the farms and enable product grading in the processing plants.

Shellfish plants will be using shucking machines to increase the diversity of products on offer. Clams and oysters will be sold to markets that are currently economically inaccessible to shell-on or traditional shucked product. Shellfish value-added products will move beyond the supermarket seafood counter and attract a much wider retail demographic.

When we look back in 2010, we will be amazed at how we did things at the beginning of the century. Of that we can be sure.