SBIR-STTR Award

Ocean Farm Technologies, Inc. of Searsmont, Maine is proposing a NOAA Phase I SBIR feasibility study of an automated system for net pen manipulation to facilitate operations of proprietary AquaPodTM fish containment system. Automated manipulation of the AquaPodTM net pen will allow remote operation of mortality collection, cleaning, maintenance, inspection and harvesting operations. Human interaction with these operations will be reduced, and where human interaction is necessary the work can be done from the surface, reducing as much as possible the amount of scuba diving required. This feasibility study will include testing of prototype automation systems on a full sized AquaPodTM at a commercial fish farm, as well as analysis of costs of this system compared with existing submerged net pens and traditional suspended net pens systems. SUMMARY OF

Anticipated Results:
Labor intensive operations including scuba diving are a significant barrier to successful commercialization of offshore aquaculture. Development of automated systems to handle routine operations will increase the competitiveness of offshore aquaculture as well as increasing safety.

Open-ocean finfish aquaculture presents many challenges including net handling, scuba diving in adverse conditions, maintenance, and feeding. In Phase I, Ocean Farm Technologies, Inc. successfully demonstrated the feasibility of pen rotation, which is essential to maintaining a fish pen offshore. Phase II will develop a prototype automated operations system for marine finfish net pens. Automated manipulation of the AquapodTM net pen will allow remote mortality collection, cleaning, maintenance, inspection and harvesting operations. T his includes hardening of the rotation hardware, buoyancy chambers and valving, needs identified during our feasibility study. Phase II funding will also enable OFT to develop custom electronics for the control system and create a versatile graphic user interface. The Phase I feasibility study also uncovered the potential to add more features tot the control hardware and software, which will broaden the automation from the narrow but critical function of rotation to include environmental and crop monitoring. This latter feature will have commercial potential for marine finfish containment systems other than the AquapodTM. Savings in labor and reduction of scuba diving will be a key selling point OFT intends to market globally the technology developed through this SBIR effort to owners of Aquapod net pen and other submersible and surface net pens. SUMMARY OF

Anticipated Results:
The Phase II development will result in products that can be customized for sale to marine finfish net pen operations utilizing AquapodTM or other net pen platforms