By Mark James

1. The potential for
offshore aquaculture
development –
in England
CEFAS Weymouth 13-10-09
Mark James
Based on reports by James and Slaski commissioned by Defra and Seafish
A strategic review of the potential for aquaculture to
contribute to the future security of food and nonfood
products and services in the UK and
specifically England
http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/fisheries/documents/aquaculture-report0904.pdf
Appraisal of the opportunity for offshore aquaculture in UK waters
http://www.frmltd.com/Docs/Offshore%20Aquaculture%20-%20Compiled%20Final%20Report.pdf

2. First understand
“inshore” !
What is the state of the art ?
How is it conducted ?
A sense of scale, sophistication and cost!

3. •14 ~90m cages each holding ~25,000 fish
•~50 tonnes of fish per cage
•~12-15kg/m cu stocking density
•probably holding 700 tonnes at max
biomass
•Producing to different specs for major
retailers

4. Top Secret !
Processing
and
Filleting
Machines

5. Inshore works – why go
offshore?
•Environmental concerns
•Resource conflicts
•Lack of availability of suitable sites for expansion
Current “reality” based on Scottish experience
•Many environmental concerns have or are being addressed
•Resource conflicts are increasingly receiving more objective
consideration by planners and politicians
•Operators are consolidating activity to fewer larger sites in
more appropriate locations (>2,000t sites)
•Site availability is often a matter of commercial territoriality and
politics than a physical constraint
•Still quite a lot of unused capacity at existing sites
•Currently no obvious commercial investment/interest in
developing “offshore” – higher costs and greater risks –
•BUT – some movement to more exposed locations!

6. Hot off the press!
Marine Harvest proposing to invest up to £40m in developing
exposed sites off the Outer Hebrides. Each of the new sites
will be ~4,000t taking 4.5 million smolts per year. Personnel
will live on site.

7. Inshore works – why go
offshore?
Some potentially positive drivers:
•“Unlimited” access to physical resource
•Less regulation
•Less impact on the environment
•Less disease
•Potential for very large farms and associated economies of
scale
•In reality - little hard evidence to support such claims
BUT - Some strategic drivers that will affect the status quo!

8. Strategic Drivers – “The Perfect Storm”
To accommodate these changes that will take place within
a generation we must take bold strategic decisions to
secure sustainable food and non-food resources at
national and regional level
Energy
Supply – Demand = Energy Gap Human Health
Obesity and Age
Population
Size and Demographic
Climate Change
Scale and Geographic Impact

9. What does this mean for
aquaculture?
FAO per caput Fish Consumption
Projection
World – 2009 - 6.7 billion – 9.2 billion 19
19
(27% increase) by 2050
18
EU – 2009 - 495 million – 521 million
17
by 2035 per caput fish
consumption 16
2002
16 2030
UK – 2008 – 61 million - 77 million by
15
2060 (26% increase)
14
2002 2030
Fish Demand/Supply
Aquaculture
(Total 80m tonnes)
200
150 40
million 40
100 180 39 Freshwater
tons
41 Marine Brackish
50 100
0
Demand Supply
2030 2004

10. What do we mean by
“offshore”
and “open ocean
aquaculture” ?
Site Class Significant Wave Height Degree of Exposure
(Hs)(Meters)
1 <0.5 Small
2 0.5-1.0 Moderate
3 1.0-2.0 Medium
4 2.0-3.0 High
5 >3.0 Extreme
Norwegian aquaculture site classification scheme (after Ryan, 2004). The average height of the
highest one third of waves recorded in a given monitoring period. Also referred to as H⅓ or Hs.

11. Inshore works – why
go offshore?
Characteristics Coastal (inshore) Offshore aquaculture
Location/hydrography 05-3 km, 10-50 m depth; within 2+ km (>1nm), generally within
sight, usually at least semi- continental
sheltered shelf zones, possibly open-
ocean
Environment Hs <=3-4 m, usually <=1 m; Hs 5 m or more, regularly 2-3
short period winds, localized m, oceanic swells, variable
coastal currents, possibly wind periods, possibly less
strong tidal streams localized current effect
Access >=95% accessible on at least Usually >80% accessible,
once daily basis, landing landing may be possible,
usually possible periodic, e.g., every 3-10 days
Operation Regular, manual involvement, Remote operations, automated
feeding, monitoring, etc. feeding, distance monitoring,
system function
Key distinctions of offshore aquaculture (Muir, 1998).

12. Hs <0.5m
Hs 0.5 – 1.0m
Hs 1.0 – 2.0m
Hs >3.0m
Hs 2.0 – 3.0m
OFFSHORE – CLASS 5
After Ryan, 2004 (Open Ocean Aquaculture)

13. Parameters to be
considered
•Physical – wave climate and current speed
•Biological – physiological requirements of stock, health
and welfare
•Environmental – benthic impacts, carrying/assimilative
capacity, wild interactions
•Legislative – UK/EU/International regulation and
obligations
•Economic - financial viability – BIGGEST BARRIER!
•Technical – cage/pen – surface/submerged – remote
operation

14. Physical Forces
– wave climate
CLASS 1&2 inshore
sites Hs <1.0m
CLASS 3 offshore
sites Hs 1.0-2.0m

15. Wave Height vs Depth
Surface
Depth
Seabed
Orbital motion created by waves decreases
exponentially with depth
Need to take into account forces acting on structures
and stock – abrasion, scale loss – death, excessive
energy consumption to hold station within the cage
etc……

16. Physical Forces
– current speed
Optimal current
speeds for marine
finfish cultivation
<1.0 m/s

17. Current Speed vs
Depth
Surface
Depth
Seabed
Current Speed
Greatest change in velocity

18. Combined effect –
wave height and current
speed
Ninian Central Platform
in Block 3-3 of the North
Sea - 100 miles east of
Shetland, depth of
133m. Maximum wave
height ~ 18m Current
speeds ~ 0.8ms-1 at
surface to 0.5ms-1, 10m
above the seabed
Cages might
need to be
submerged
>30m
A comparison of an extreme open ocean conditions of waves and currents and
sheltered site conditions (dotted line indicates that a submersion in the open
ocean of about 31m will result in loads comparable with those at surface at a
sheltered site (F/Fmax (horizontal) = maximum horizontal force, d=depth in
metres, H = maximum wave height in metres and corresponding wave period, T
in seconds, Uc = current velocity in meters per second) (after Ágústsson,
2004).

19. Environmental factors
•Dispersion of waste given current speed maxima of
stock and distance from seabed of possibly submerged
cage may not be radically different to inshore
•Existing regulatory tools/models may not be suitable for
application offshore
•Monitoring requirements may be more costly to
implement
•Prevention of escapes – may be more problematic
•Fouling – need to minimise to reduce drag forces and
maximise water circulation in cage

20. Legislation
• Probably an adequate regulatory regime to 3nm limit
•But questionable whether existing regulation is sufficient
to cover aquaculture developments beyond 3nm
•Some WFD regulation may be transposable. Current
offshore environmental regulation designed around
oil/gas and more recently renewables – not suitable for
aquaculture
• Notion that there will be less regulation offshore may
not hold in reality……..

21. Economics
Economic viability of offshore aquaculture is probably the
biggest barrier to overcome
Model Example for a 10,000 t offshore farm:
Salmon – fast growing – high fillet yield
•The unit cost of production probably in line with estimates of
current Scottish inshore salmon aquaculture.
•Cost £23.5 million to establish project
•IRR 15%
Cod – slower growing – lower fillet yield
The unit cost of production probably in line with estimates of
current Scottish inshore salmon aquaculture.
Cost £30.7 million to establish project
IRR 10%
Typically IRRs > 30% would be required to interest pure
financial investors. Industrial investors already in aquaculture
would probably be content with IRRs of 15%+ if the technology
was proven, but this is not the case with offshore aquaculture.
*Think of IRR as the rate of growth a project is expected to generate

22. Economics
Sensitivity analysis revealed that sale price of product had the
greatest impact on profitability.
Effect of 10% Variation Above and Below Core
Assumptions for Some Key Variables
900%
800%
700%
600%
% Change in 500%
Project IRR 400%
300%
200%
100%
0%
Sales Price Juvenile Pen Cost Feed Cost
Price
Salmon Example - £2.75 down to £2.25/kg, IRR 27% to 3%. >
£20 million upfront – marketing plan needs to be optimal to avert
financial disaster!

23. Technical
considerations
•Containment systems – cages/pens
•Remotely operated systems
•Some of this technology exists, is in use and could be
adapted to offshore use (CLASS 3 and 4 sites)
•No commercial scale CLASS 5 (open ocean) technology
exists for aquaculture
•Many systems designed by engineers – not fish farmers!
•Some too expensive to ever be economically viable
•Some technically too complex
•Some take no proper account of operational
requirements – such as harvesting/feeding/treating for
disease
•The graveyard for failed prototypes and commercial
lemons is already large!

24. Gravity Cages
polarCirkel® submersible cage is
designed for sites subjected to
rough weather, pollution, algal
blooms, wide temperature
variations, fouling, icing of cages
and drift ice
Canadian Aquaculture Engineering Group (AEG – Canada). Above –
plan view of six cages attached to framework and through a feed and
service barge to a single point mooring system.

25. Gravity Cages – semi-submersible
Farmocean cage deployed and
diagram of cage showing
complete system in side view
Gravity Cages – fully-submersible
Diagram of structure of SADCO Shelf and deployed system at surface.

26. Anchor tension – cages and enclosures
Diagram of Ocean Spar net
pen – note the spar bouys at
each corner, against which the
net is tensioned.
Diagram of one segment of the conceptual
MFRL design. This enclosure system would be
by far the largest single cage unit if deployed

27. Semi Rigid Cages
Oceanspar cage submerged –
designed to operate at Hs of 7m
Rigid Cages
Fish farm platform from
Marina System Iberica – the
Cultimar

28. OceanGlobe in service
position at the surface and
submerged
Conceptual Ocean drfiter cage
and detail of spar

29. Izar Fene Semi submersible
tuna/restocking ship – concept.
Izar Fene Semi
submersible platform -
concept
Only two or three of the forgoing designs have ever been
successfully deployed for commercial scale fish farming

30. Shellfish – offshore?
•In some respects – shellfish production may be more suited to
offshore development than fish in the first instance.
•Submerged and semi submerged long line systems for mussels
– a well thought through and properly resourced pilot scale
demonstration project in CLASS 3 conditions is required – see
Holmyard 2008
•10,000 hectare continuous long line mussel farm in the
advanced stages of planning for deployment in ~6m Hs in NZ
•The potential to develop shellfish culture in association
with offshore renewables development should be explored
- See Buck's work – associated with renewables

31. Algal biomass –
offshore?
•Biofuels do not need to come from land
•Marifuels – bioethanol, biodiesel and more complex
alcohols – biobutanol
•30 times more oil per hectare than current biofuel crops
•Cleaner, more easily degraded and more easily blended
with mineral oils than terrestrial biofuel equivalents
•EU target for 5.75% biofuel content for transport by 2010
would require about 25% of EU arable land use!
6 million Euro project - a drop in the ocean! This should be
an area of major strategic national investment for the UK!

32. •ExxonMobile – recently announced $600million
investment in development of biofuel from microalgae –
a fraction of the cost of finding and exploiting a new oil
field!

33. Other non-food
aquaculture futures !
The Kelp Car
Toyota is looking to a greener future — literally — with dreams of an
ultralight, superefficient plug-in hybrid with a bioplastic body made of
seaweed that could be in showrooms within 15 years.
The kelp car would build upon the already hypergreen 1/X plug-in hybrid
concept, which weighs 926 pounds, by replacing its carbon-fiber body
with plastic derived from seaweed. As wild as it might sound, bioplastics
are becoming increasingly common and Toyota thinks it’s only a matter
of time before automakers use them to build cars.

34. A possible long-term
(15-20 year) future
•Large scale macroalgal cultivation based on
submerged long line or similar technologies
•Forming “natural” islands and harbours – creating
conditions suitable for fish and shellfish cultivation
offshore – possible synergies with other offshore
renewable developments and infrastructure
•Some potential for realising multi-trophic aquaculture
– Nitrogenous waste from fish farm helps to fertilise
algae. Organic waste from fish farm feeds shellfish

35. A short to medium
term goal
(3-5 years)!
•A pilot scale project to be conducted within the 3nm
limit.
•Tested with existing cage and longline systems in
appropriate exposed sites – must be strongly grounded
by industry – with appropriate assistance from research
community - a UK/national goal.
•Take a more proactive role in engaging with
international efforts – but remain focused on
commercial realities at every stage – avoid the lemons!
•Above all – adopt a properly – nationally and, as far as
possible, internationally co-ordinated approach.

36. A final thought!
OFF-PLANET AQUACULTURE

37. Thankyou for your attention!