A number of weeks ago Andrew Duff spoke about co-operatives in Aquaculture. In particular, he suggested possible advantages for small producers achieving economies of scale in areas such as marketing to high value, large fish markets in Asia.

This concept interested me and I’ve been doing some research on some existing co-ops.

Broken Bay Oysters is one. They faced a tough problem a number of years ago and through grouping their funds were able to invest in the technology necessary to solve their predicament.

This story can be read at the link below;

http://www.hospitalitymagazine.com.au/Article.aspx?ArticleID=234954

Here’s an example of a much larger scale co-op that represents a range of organic foods in Switzerland. Even though it’s not a purely aquaculture based co-op, it is funding important research into 1) processing of organic aquaculture products and 2) natural antioxidant constituents in fishmeal.

Here’s some information;

http://www.growfish.com.au/content.asp?contentid=3729

Getting back to purely aquaculture co-ops - Read this excerpt about the Texas Aquaculture Cooperative:

<<<<”The positive feasibility study provided the impetus for 31 producers to form the Texas Aquaculture Cooperative in the fall of 2002. Shimek is the co-op president and Hanson is vice president. They began processing their local catfish harvests in a building donated by Harold Bowers of Bowers Shrimp Company in Palacios.

Peter Woods became the Extension fisheries program specialist in the summer of 2002 and began working with co-op members to improve and expand their production ponds. He has helped growers produce 8,000 to 10,000 pounds of fish per acre. Most co-op members have several 8- to 10-acre ponds.

A few months later, with a business and marketing plan in hand, co-op members pooled $415,000 of their own start-up capital and built a 5,250-square-foot processing facility near Markham. The plant can process 150,000 pounds of fresh catfish per week.

The plant churned out more than 867,000 pounds of catfish in the last year, employed 24 full-time workers, and has pumped more than $17 million into the regional economy.”>>>>

Does anyone know of any WA or Australian Co-ops who are following a similar business growth strategy?

Sean

Building farm ponds has become phenomena within aquaculture industry. They range from single purpose ponds to multipurpose ponds based on the needs for building the ponds. Some of the common uses for these ponds include fish farming, water reservoir purposes, irrigation purposes and recreation purposes.

The essentials in the design and construction of farm ponds are:

·         Adequate water source: The area where the pond is constructed should have bountiful supply of water either it be overland drainage, ground water, in stream flowing water or diverted water flow. The reliable source for supply of water in the pond is an essential determination at the design stage.

·         Proper Drainage Area: When designing the pond there are aspects to put into consideration like the measurements, runoff volume and evaporation rate. Selecting the proper area will facilitate fertilization of the pond and minimize the water loss from evaporation.

·         Determining the type of soil in the area is a precondition to building farm ponds. Areas with impermeable soils are the ones suitable for farm ponds since they minimize to the maximum or prevent the rate of water seeping downward which has an impact on maintaining the suitable water level.

http://www.abcponds.com/

Wave energy is a form of renewable energy source generated by the ocean’s wave, and potentially could be used to generate electricity, as well as the free source of energy used for water purification.

The World Energy Council estimated that around 2 terawatts (2 million megawatts) could be produced from the oceans via wave power. This is figure is two times higher than the current world electricity production. It is also estimated that 1 million gigawatt hours of wave energy hits Australian shores annually [1]. Note that wave power is to be differentiated with tidal power [2], which is based on the tidal movement due to relative motion of moon and earth .

Wave energy generation is suitable to be implemented Western Australia, since our wave current is quite strong. Other part of Australia that has strong wave current is Tasmania and eastern side of South Australia. This is quite interesting, since most of the aquaculture industry are located around this area. 

There is one Western Australian company called CETO, which is having the technology to harvest the energy from the ocean’s wave for water purification and power generation.

http://www.ceto.com.au

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V27ZBODcv0c

Perhaps, CETO technology could be used to help aquaculture industry.

[1] CETO: http://www.ceto.com.au

[2] Tidal Power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power

Reuters recently ran a shortarticle regarding the continued surge in food prices, despite a drop in commodities like grain, as well as energy prices:

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE49K6ZE20081021

Despite dropping costs of transport and feed (e.g. grains), the prices are not expected to be passed on the consumer due to continued demand and limited supply - the US Department of Agriculture estimated a surge in food prices be  by 5.5 percent in 2008 and 4.5 percent next year - the third year in a row when US food prices will use at least 4 percent.

Specifically,  fish are forecast to rise 3.5 percent during this year.

To put this in context, fish prices are to continue increasing as production (e.g grain feed) and transport fall - This may make certain types of innovation more attractive (e.g using Lupin protein rather than fish protein as feed), and others less so (e.g energy source innovation in the face of cheaper oil).

Does anyone have any data on both the reactions and longer term projections of the grain / lupin market (or other fields discussed in this forum) in the face international financial crisis? This may help in selecting the innovations that best fir the new macroeconomic climate.

Water quality is major issue for closed aquaculture systems and management can be constant battle against a number of factors.  

An emerging technology that has had success in the agriculture sector could be the next big thing in aquaculture.

 Hydrasmart is used in water systems as a defence to the formation of minerals and chemicals in water.  It does this by using a series of computer generated resonance frequecies to disrupt electron bonding between particles.  

It has been sucessful in the wine industry by preventing calcium scale built up in drip feed reticulation systems and also been used in water remediation of waterways by removing algae and mould.  The Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABC) presented a story on its landline program in 2007.

At the moment the South Australian company is going through a private equity raising exercise to commercially develop the technology for the Australian and Asia markets.  Applications to aquaculture at the moment are limited, however it is only a matter of time until the technology takes hold within the industry.

The benefits of offshore aquaculture are mainly centred on the fact that nearshore farming operations often conflict with local fisheries, recreational activities and coastal aesthetics. Also, moving aquaculture facilities to less polluted marine enviroments offshore can improve the quality of the harvest. Moreover, with high flushing  rates in the open ocean, the impacts of effluents from aquaculture production on benthic communities can also be reduced.

The contraints of offshore aquaculture are centred on the fact that it is expensive to operate, require sturdier infrastructure than nearshore systems, they are more difficult to access and high labour costs in comparison to near shore systems

RFID (Radio Frequency ID) is an electronic tag that can be attached to an object for wireless identification for automation, tracking, authentication and logistic purposes.

RFID has gained momentum in the recent years due to advances in electronics microminiaturisation, making it possible and more effective to be used in vast applications where size, reliability and cost are critical [see (1)]. It used to be bulky, but nowadays RFID tag can be shrunk to smaller than the size of a grain of rice.

Interestingly however, one of the first applications of RFID technology was not to track goods passing through a supply chain, but rather to track living beings moving through an ecosystem.

RFID tagging has been used as early as 1980’s in US to identify and track salmon migration patterns in the largest river in Northwest America (Columbia river) that has lots of complex system and man-made dams (2).

Used as microchip implant (3), RFID tag is used to collect detailed information such as: sub-species, age, waterway and habitat of origin, condition of the fish, and so on  which helped authorities to better manage dam operations to minimize the impact on fish and wildlife. RFID tags have been used as well in various salmon hactheries in Canada for tracking and statistical purposes. 

There might be risk using RFID as implant in animals, because tumors at the site of implantation have been reported in laboratory mice and rats(4).  However, RFID is still considered safe by various institutions such as US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAV), (5). 

A group of Japanese researchers reported that they have experimentally made RFID tag from Salmon DNA in 2005 (6), so that the organic RFID might be more compatible to be implanted in Salmon compared with silicon based RFID in the future.

In short, I believe that RFID Technology would be potentially beneficial to be used for Automated monitoring and identification in our salmon industry.

More Info:

(1) RFID:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID

(2) Salmon tracking:

http://www.itworldcanada.com/Pages/Docbase/ViewArticle.aspx?id=idgml-f074f0e3-3f68-4820-a841-b37de22673ab

(3) Microchip Implant: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(animal)

(4) Implant & tumor:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/08/AR2007090800997_pf.html

(5) RFID is safe:

http://www.wsava.org/Chip999.htm and http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/

(6) Salmon DNA RFID:

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20051220/111790/?ST=english

Specialist Aquaculture investor Aquacopia is a New York based venture capital manager.

Managing Director, David Tze recently dropped by the finfish site.

Aquacopia’s website presents its investment focus as ”early-stage seafood farms, aquaculture technologies, and related supply, service, and marketing firms”.

To date,. David’s firm has invested in 

• Ocean Farm Technologies, Inc. produces a unique, complete net pen culture system for finfish in deep water. The current, largest cage configuration is over 10,000 cubic meters. Operating submerged or partially surfaced, the Aquapod is a geodesic spheroid comprised of modular, triangular net panels.
• Snapperfarm, Inc., an open ocean fish farm off of Puerto Rico, is a trailblazer in offshore finfish culture. It has harvested four annual crops of cobia.
• Aquacopia made an investment in Oberon FMR, Inc., a firm that produces a high-quality, ultra-sustainable protein meal that is a partial or total replacement for fish meal in aquaculture and animal feeds.

David shares his views on aquaculture as an investment ion this TV interview which profiles offshore aquaculture in the US.

Readers may care to highlight other venture capital investors that have portfolio interests in aquaculture.