Aquapod™ (Source: Ocean Farm Technologies, Inc.)

Sometime ago we posted about heading towards automation self propelled aquaculture cages. Since then, Cliff Goudey, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Offshore Aquaculture Engineering Center, has been working on a project funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is testing these cages with cobia farming operations in Puerto Rico.

Goudey has equipped an Aquapod™ cage, produced by Maine-based Ocean Farm Technologies, Inc., with a set of propellers, which act as big screws that churn their way through the ocean.

Self Propelled Cage (Source: www.wickedlocal.com)

Working recently at Snapperfarm Inc., the cobia operation in Puerto Rico, Goudey’s cage has proved itself capable of moving on its own.

For footage of the sea trials in action click here to watch a video.

Click here for more information on this topic. ]]> http://finfish.org/blog/robotic-offshore-cages-%e2%80%93-the-future-of-fish-farming/feed/ 0 http://finfish.org/blog/fish-vaccines-for-viral-infections/ http://finfish.org/blog/fish-vaccines-for-viral-infections/#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:00:54 +0000 Hayley http://finfish.org/?p=574 The economic cost of disease outbreaks to aquaculture producers could be reduced with the results from the PEPTIDEX project.

The project is involved with research into efficient vaccines against viral fish pathogens.

There are currently no vaccines available that successfully protect from viral infections in fish.  Research on the peptide based vaccination will adapt the technology of its proven success in warm-blooded vertebrates to use in cold-blooded vertebrates.

The objective of the project is to develop a pathogen epitope prediction programme and to design a viral pathogen peptide – vaccine.

The project will develop reagents for use in immunological research in Atlantic salmon.

Another benefit is the reduction of the environmental impact of an outbreak by reducing the spread of disease to wild populations of fish.

If successful, this represents a new approach to developing vaccines against viral agents in fish and may be further developed into a commercial product.

To test this insight I decided to investigate a hot field of inventive activity unrelated to fishing or aquaculture. According to an October 2008 report from the Office of Industries of the US International Trade Commission industrial biotechnology is an emerging field of biotechnology characterized by the use of enzymes, microorganisms, and other biocatalysts to create new products.

The report: may be accessed here Patenting Trends and Innovation in Industrial Biotechnology.  

To test the notion stated at the commencement of the post I reviewed the patent portfolios of some of the most active patenting companies to determine their relevance to aquaculture.

Novozymes is a producer of enzymes and micro-organisms for pharmaceutical and industrial uses. The company was founded in Denmark as a medical firm in 1925 and began producing enzymes for industrial use (for the softening of leather) in 1941. Novozymes has production and research facilities in Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Sweden, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and research facilities in India. 

While the largest share of Novozymes’ revenue comes from detergent enzymes, in the last few years, sales of technical enzymes, such as those that convert starch to sugars for the production of ethanol, have grown at a faster pace and are now almost equal to the company’s sales of detergent enzymes.

In 2007, Novozymes had revenue of $1.54 billion, net income of $213 million, and about 4,700 employees. Novozymes’ strong revenue and net income growth over the period have enabled growing R&D expenditures, which increased from $138.0 million in 2001 to $202.6 million in 2007.

The strategy for the future growth of the company is to expand the market for enzymes by producing new products, and new applications for current products, through substantial R&D efforts.

The report is valuable because on page 4-6 Figure 4.3 it broadly outlines the scope of the Novozymes patent portfolio as consisting of:

“an estimated 334 patents, and has pending an estimated 447 patent applications with the USPTO for the 1997–2007 period” 

Given this, we can assume that Novozymes has gained a thorough appreciation of the business of innovation and the role of intellectual property protection.

To test the notion that Novozymes might have IP valuable in aquaculture I determined to use the superficial approach of seeing whether the term ‘aquaculture’ was used in any of their patents.  I used the free patent search feature at Free Patents Online. Many other more sophisticated patent analytics tools exist to enable such investigations.

First I decided to investigate how many patents and patent applications were linked to Novozymes as an Assignee – 937 for US granted patents and applications.

I then searched for the word ‘aquaculture’ in all patent documents where Novozymes were identified as the assignee using the search string:  AN/novozymes AND ABST/aquaculture to determine how many Novozymes patents anticipate application in the field of aquaculture. 

The result is available here. Novozymes has identified bacteria which are more effective at removing ammonia and nitrite than the commonly used bacteria. Novoezymes present their product information here.

It would be interesting to judge the performance of this consortium of nitrifying bacteria on some inert media for removal of nitrates and ammonia for RAS systems.

A recent patent application notes that certain peptides can be incorporated in polymer formulations to prevent biofouling.

MariCal’s technology platform is built around the science of calcium sensing receptor proteins (CaSRs). MariCal’s key discovery is that of a class of molecular extracellular ion receptor proteins, called Calcium Receptors serve as the biological “thermostats,” or “master switches” that enable fish and other aquatic organisms to sense and respond to changes in both water salinity and nutrients in their aquatic environment.

MariCal’s Calcium Sensing Receptors have an array of existing interesting applications in aquaculture: 

• In late June 2008 MariCal announced the exclusive global licensing of the Company’s smoltification technology, the SuperSmolt® Program, to Europharma to service the commercial salmon industry.
• In addition, MariCal is a joint-venture partner in Low Salinity Inc., based in Saltville, Virginia – a land-based recirculation production and research facility for cobia.

MariCal states that amongst other things that its capabilities can be used to generate the following benefits in finfish aquaculture:

• Add value with an all natural finishing process
  • permits fine-tuning of taste
  • increases fillet thickness
  • assures consistent taste/texture of aquacultured freshwater and saltwater fish
• Increase yield for higher profit
• Produce high value marine species in freshwater sites near major markets
• Improved methods of producing and processing fish eggs for caviar and sushi markets

The discovery, development and deployment of MariCal’s calcium receptor science in aquaculture is an exceptional example of the cross boundary application of science to generate breakthroughs in an ‘unrelated field’ – one of the classical tennets of the practice of open innovation.

For a more extended discussion of the science behind Calcium Receptors, their role in humans, and how they function in aquatic organisms, click here for a PDF document.

Elements of Marical’s patent portfolio may be viewed here.

MariCal has operations in Chile, through its subsidiary CienciaMar, and offices in Canada, United Kingdom, and Norway.

To date, the Finfish site includes nine other posts which address issues related to fouling.  These may be accessed by clicking on this link or by conducting a search by typing your terms into the box on the top right hand corner of this page.

There’s plenty of discussion and research about this issue right now;

http://www.international.inra.fr/press/use_plant_raw_materials_fish_feed

Given the need for top quality aquaculture producers to differentiate lesser quality operations and from “every man and his dog” who are entering the industry with small scale operations, wouldn’t this be an ideal way for producers to differenciate their product in mainstream media/ on supermarket shelves?

Mainstream media has not yet begun to make an issue of these facts. Would it not be an opportunity for the industry leaders to go to market and begin to leverage customer preference and loyalty through highlighting this issue?

Sean

Taurine is found throughout key areas of the human body. It is mainly found in the muscles and the brain, in the heart and in the blood. White blood cells, too, have high concentrations of taurine. It is also known to be exteremely important for the development of the brain, the retina of the eye, and the liver of the newly born. 

Taurine is also important in other functions of the body. For example, taurine facilitates the passage of numerous substances into the bloodstream and enhances fat metabolism. Taurine also plays an important role during liver metabolism. Additionally,  taurine has a positive effect on the re-absorption of fat soluble vitamins and influences the serum cholesterol level. 

Taurine-enriched fish would be able to offer consumers significant additional health benefits. In much the same way as consumers are conscious of the benefits of seafood high in Omega-3 fatty acids, seafood producers would market the additional health value of taurine-enriched fish to differentiate their product and create a competitive advantage.

The complete article can be found here.

Two types of sea lice Caligus and the larger Lepeophtheirus, recognised by their horse shoe shaped outer shell bite intensively farmed fish and damage the scales, cell tissue and mucous membrane.

This leads to a weakening of the fish’s immune system leaving it open to secondary infections and water accumulation in the tissue.

Hariolf Schmid (2003) suggests a method of solving this sea lice problem in fish farms by treating the whole school of fish with a semi-automatic injection device. This device involves directing the fish single file past an inoculation apparatus that weighs the fish and administers a correct dose to each fish.

An amazing invention! Details of the patent can be viewed here

A novel application of NIR tehcnology has emerged through its use in assessing the highly variable nutritional content of fishmeal and other animal meals. Although I have been unable to track down the source, a leading researcher in the has told me that NIR is now being applied to provide real time analysis of meal batches as they are processed.

He explained that as the quality of meal batches varies wildly, samples of each batch are being analysed so that this information can be forwarded to the customer – aquafeed manufacturers – as the batch arrives at the mills.

These companies can then use this information to tweak their feed formulations to maintain product quality and ensure the nutritional content of their feed products.  This real time feedback brings some certainty to the task of formulating feeds using these highly variable meals.

If anyone can tell me where this technology is being applied in this manner, or who is doing it, I’d be very interested to hear it.

The understanding of potential consequences (risks) caused by environmental distribution of DNA vaccines, for instance, horizontal gene transfer may occur from transgenic DNA in vaccines to the recipient genome of micro-organisms or DNA vaccines may be released by faeces to the environment (Gillund et al, 2008)  

Basically, DNA vaccination is defined as the intentional transfer of genetic material to somatic cells for the purposes of influencing the immune system.

 The main problem faced by DNA vaccination, is need for research with risk-associated in it.  As scientists express diverging opinions regarding possible consequences of DNA vaccination in aquaculture, in the report, more specifically, the following issues were considered as relevant when conducting post market monitoring:

• Changes in the fish population
• Changes in the occurrence of fish diseases, or development of new diseases
• Occurrence of rare or unexpected immunological effects
• Integration into the genome of the recipient organism and inheritance to future generations
• Impacts on humans health when consuming DNA vaccinated fish
• Changes in the sea sediments and the population of micro-organisms

In Canada the IHNV DNA vaccine (Apex-IHN®), with the purpose of achieving resistance to infectious haematopoietic necrosis virus in Atlantic salmon, was approved for commercialization by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in July 2005.

Furunculosis are most likely to occur in fish during the critical smolting and spawning stages of their development, and are caused by the onset of higher water temperatures or during periods of rapid temperature change.

These probiotics would replace the existing antibiotic feed premix treatment, which has the disadvantages commonly associated with antibiotics – gradual disease resistance in fish and occasionally in the humans that consume them.

Heriot-Watt University are currently looking for parties interested in obtaining a licence to this technology, forming a joint venture or sponsoring continued developments.