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The following story was posted this morning on the ABC News Website: Tuna boss threatens to quit Pt Lincoln

Mr Hagen Stehr, chairman of Clean Seas Tuna, has voiced strong concern regarding the possibility that Centrex Metals may be permitted to ship iron ore from Port Lincoln, suggesting he may relocate his business if this occurs.

This raises an interesting topic for discussion. With increasing competition for the utilisation of oceanic waters, how will this be regulated into the future? How will the zoning of appropriate waters for fish farming stack up against competing industries such as oil and gas and mineral exploration, who may be vying to use the same ‘patch’ of water?

Please post a comment and let us know what you think.   

The United States Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service has established a National Cold Water Marine Aquaculture Center in Franklin, Maine. The Center is currently focusing it’s efforts on genetic improvement of Atlantic Salmon.

Form more information on the Center’s research efforts, please follow the link here.

We have updated our summary of information about aquaculture problems right across the aquaculture value chain here. If you want to create world class productivity transforming innovations then read about problems to be solved first!

One of the key factors that has driven the long term trend of increasing per capita fish intake across the globe is that fish consumption is promoted by nutritionists as a very important component of a healthy diet. Current thinking has targeted the Omega-3 fatty acid content of fish oils as a major contributor to the healthy diet aspects of fish eating.

Farmed fish require feed with specific protein and oil components in order to grow. Traditionally, the lion’s share of this has been derived from wild stocks of ‘feed fish’. However, even a cursory appreciation of the numbers and what we know about today’s feed conversion ratios make it apparent that it will not be sustainable to overcome the fish production gap using wild caught fish to feed farmed fish. Does the pressure on feed fish stocks mean that there is a prospect that Omega-3 fatty acids will disappear from farmed fish? Does this mean that a fundamental limiter exists that will prevent us from ever bridging the fish production gap?

Significant efforts are being made now to overcome this limiter with efforts being put into developing high protein grain-based replacements for feed fish (soy, lupins, etc). Genetically engineered plants which produce essential omega-3 fish oils could offer a new way of improving people’s diets, scientists working on an EU project said at a conference on ‘Incorporating Omega 3 in the food chain’. Long-chain fatty acids called eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), found mainly in oily fish such as salmon, mackerel and herring, provide protection against cardiovascular diseases, slow down mental decline in the elderly and are essential for the healthy development of a baby’s brain in the womb.

Whilst experts recommend a daily intake of 450mg of omega-3 fatty acids, most adults barely manage half that amount. Among teenagers, the figure drops to just 100mg a day, and intake in low-income families is around 50mg per day less than in other families.

There are no naturally occurring plant species that have the capacity to synthesise long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. EPA and DHA are normally made by microscopic marine algae which are then eaten by small fish, passing the fatty acids into the food chain. Research conducted as part of the Lipgene project took key genes from algae and inserted them into oil seed. The results show that the plants were able to synthesise omega-3 fatty acids in their seed oils.

These outcomes show promise that GM-enhanced plant sources may be suitable suppliers of both protein and Omega-3 oils in manufactured aquaculture feed and that a sustainable route to overcoming the fish gap is potentially feasible.

More information about the Lipgene Project is available here.

We provide more resources for identifying innovation components for significant aquaculture innovation. Some examples of relevant innovation components found from these sources may be reviewed here.

We are building a world wide community of innovators to help overcome the massive shortfall in global fish supply. Assist visitors to your site to explore a world wide community of aquaculture innovators.

Like the Aquaculture Council of Western Australia and the European Aquaculture Society you can help us to get the word out about the Finfish Aquaculture Innovation initiative. Include a finfish button and text on your website…..

Please use these buttons:

You may also care to use some of this text to help explain the finfish initiative:

The finfish.org web site provides a communication platform for a significant global effort in aquaculture innovation. The focus of this effort is to produce industrial quantities of premium quality table fish for the world’s most competitive markets. One of the key steps in the process will be the development of a Finfish Innovation Roadmap.

The Roadmap will define productivity-transforming innovations. Through the Roadmap, appropriate entrepreneurial, corporate and innovation capabilities will be assembled to enable the innovations to be developed and applied in the marketplace.

The need has emerged due to a fish supply gap. The FAO project that the gap will be 37 million tonnes per annum by 2030.

The finfish project is seeking participants. Please visit http://finfish.org to find out more about the project and how to participate.

The quality of a business opportunity is linked to a small number of factors. Amongst the most important of these is the size of the market opportunity.

Recently, the European Union Fisheries Commissioner, Joe Borg mapped out the future for aquaculture in the EU. In his address he quoted FAO data:

“With wild fish capture facing a number of severe constraints, aquaculture appears to be the only viable option to meet this growing demand. According to the FAO, global aquaculture production will have to double by 2030 to keep pace with the demand. This represents, in absolute terms, an increase of almost 40 million tons.”

Given this massive increase in demand there is a major opportunity for business to create the supply.

Mr Borg also noted that the EU itself represents a major export destination with current net imports of almost three million tons of seafood and, according to Eurostat forecasts, this figure is set to increase to 12 million tons by 2025.

Mr Borg went on to observe:

“There is also a widely-shared view that the EU aquaculture sector should develop by combining high volume products with niche production to satisfy more specific and high quality market demands.”

“We concur with this view. It is market and local prevailing conditions that will determine which type of production can withstand competition from imported products and can meet the needs of consumers and/or processors. Public authorities can help by providing an effective, fair and transparent legislative framework or guidelines for product differentiation, based on initiatives such as quality assurance schemes, regional branding, sustainability labelling or organic labelling. This can provide the added value that the sector needs. It can also help meet the challenge of competition coming from emerging economies with lower costs and standards.”

A full transcript of the Borg address is available here.

When setting out on an innovaton roadmapping effort it can pay to have a common understanding of what world class fin fish aquaculture means.  Logic would tell us that if we can measure what reaching world class means, then we are likely to have a better appreciation of what it is likely to take to get there.

Again, theory tells us that the key parameters that define the way a marketplace reacts to any product includes the following factors:

The last of the factors (emerging) are increasingly considered to be important product attributes. They include the degree of environment friendliness and the way in which information is wrapped into a product.

These are broad descriptions of product attributes that are insufficient for our needs. What we need is tangible, practical metrics against which an aquaculture product can be tested.

What is your experience with defining such measures? Can you point us to any specific numbers used in real markets today?

Roadmapping is the process of capturing information and knowledge and presenting it on a timeline.

Innovation roadmapping is a form of strategic planning for innovation. The information and knowledge collected on the Finfish Innovation Roadmap will include business vision, objectives, strategies, market requirements, product or service plans, technology plans, and capability plans. The timeline will be from the present day out to 2028.

Four Key Steps

Innovation roadmapping is a four step process:

• developing an understanding of the major changes that are impacting an industry - in this case fin fish aquaculture

• looking at the structure of the market and the relative positioning of market participants

• creating a technology landscape by looking at how the most important value creating technologies are likely to be created and used in aquaculture business

• once this is achieved, it is possible to analyse how the changes identified in the first step may lead to a shift in the needs or requirements of the marketplace. This helps expose the innovation efforts that are most likely to lead to valuable results.

An innovation roadmapping program is focussed on evaluating marketplace needs as they shift in response to the forces of change. By making a deliberate effort to dissect and understand each of ‘market’, ‘technology’ and ‘change’ we maximise the likelihood that our innovation investments will be soundly targeted at marketplace needs that are both important and not yet satisfied by alternative solutions.