There is an interesting article published by Maryland Sea grant Extension which helps to prepare detailed business plan.
The site also provides details concerning preparing a production costs proforma.
For further information you may care to visit: http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/programs/extension/aquaculture/finfish/factsheets/ff4/
Due to innovations and changing production processes in aquaculture, there has been an increase in the vulnerability of disease outbreaks.
Since the investments required by the aquaculturists are large, the demand for insurance to share and cover the risks have also gone up.
Risk management has also been gaining importance with the development of better managemnt practices, codes of conduct, standard operating procedures etc.
Aquaculture insurance is also one of the tools of risk management, but there is ignorance about its availabilty, the procedure in obtaining the insurance etc throughout the world.
A study carried out in different countries particularly the developing countries shows that the demand for insurance has never been as high as it is now due to the reason cited above.
Some of the drawbacks involve the fact that most of the insurance companies tend to only focus on the traditional aquaculture practices and are reluctant to add new techniques due to major risks involved. But on the hindsight, the experiences and improving aquaculture technolgy makes new techniques pretty safe and hence make aquaculture insurnace companies very profitable.
Nonetheless, insurance is very important in the aquaculture industry to protect the huge sum of investments done by the aquaculturists.
There are a number of blogs on the finfish site regarding different aquaculture cage technologies. However, there was little information in the way of a comparison between the different technologies. I came across a presentation which provides some insight. The presentation provides an interesting comparison of some aquaculture cage products commonly used in North America. The aquaculture cages compared are:
The presentation also considers some information on the economic viability of open ocean aquaculture of a number of important fish species. Finally, the economics of nearshore versus offshore aquaculture is considered.
Sustainable Aquaculture Management