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Seafood Innovations is making a name for itself around the world with its innovative capabilities.

Industry-scale trials have been carried out at one of Marine-Harvest’s salmon farming plants in Rogaland, Norway of an automated slaughtering machine.

The system has now been trialled in several places around the world and on several fish species.

In the Norwegian trial, salmon were pumped directly from aquaculture pens to a vessel especially outfitted for the trials. The machine kills the fish instantaneously with a blow to the head. Next, the fish are cut for bleeding and transported to a tank containing cold sterile seawater where it is bled out.

Scientists from Fiskeriforskning have confirmed that the fish are killed instantly when the machine delivers a correctly aimed blow.

An article ‘Good News for the Salmon Industry’ in a recent Fiskeriforskning newsletter confirms that the current method using CO2 will be banned from 1 July 2008. 

More details about the device including videos of it in operation can be seen here.

One of the patents associated with the device may be accessed here.

Biofouling presents a severe operational problem to aquaculture.

On fish cages, it restricts water flow through netting which reduces the supply of dissolved oxygen and the removal of excess feed and waste products.

A large mass of fouling can compete with the cultured species for food and space, and can overwhelm flotation capacity.

Current metal-based antifoulants are undesirable for aquaculture because of possible adverse environmental effects, and consumer concerns that may jeopardise market image.

Commercially available, but biodegradable compounds, or naturally occurring antifoulants extracted from marine organisms, may provide an acceptable solution by offering broad spectrum activity, and in the case of natural antifoulants, acting via chemical deterrence rather than toxicity. 

Commercialisation of antifouling technology other than paints is still in its infancy, and few field trials are reported in the literature.

Although there are many antifouling agents and compositions presently available, the methods typically used to protect an object from fouling in an aqueous environment involve applying some form of protective coating to the surface of the object.

Unfortunately, this approach is not suitable for all applications and there is a need for other means of protecting such objects from microbial- or macro-fouling.

New polymer compositions have been developed that contain antifouling agents which have surprising broad-spectrum antifouling characteristics over prolonged periods and at lower concentrations than were previously believed possible. 

Synthetic antifouling agents belonging to the families of isothiazolones, furanones, or combinations thereof have been found to be effective. This invention consists of an antifouling polymer comprising an isothiazolone or one or more furanone antifouling agents, the polymer capable of maintaining broad-spectruin antifouling activity for an extended period. The polymer is used to form a thread which may then be incorporated as part of the thread structure of a multi-stranded netting material. 

The discovery was made by researchers associated with the Aquaculture Cooperative Research Centre.

One of the patent documents related to the invention may be accessed here.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation has published a patent application and search report for a submersible rotatable cage for fish farming. The application was submitted by Canadian company  Open Ocean Systems Inc. 

The cage comprises a central axle, a buoyant structure positioned about the central axle, and a netting attached to the buoyant structure.

The buoyant structure rotates about the central axle while the cage is in a submerged position. The cage can form part of a system, which includes a net cleaning apparatus, a tethering mechanism and sweep net, that forms the basis for underwater fish farming.

The patent application and search report may be reviewed via the free WIPO patent search capability.

In the most common setup for fish farming plants, a number of floating net cages are anchored close to shore using buoys and weights to stabilize the cages in the water.

An optimal installation for fish farms of this sort is in sheltered waters such as bays and fjords and these setups often comprise support frames with gangways for operational purposes, such as maintenance and feeding.

Surface cages, however, are sensitive to severe weather conditions, such as high winds, waves and ice, which can be a serious threat in northern areas.

Submersible cages have been suggested and tested. However, these types of cages have not become commercially feasible due to problems with stability, handling and cost.  The present invention claims to overcome these limitations.

Patenting in the field of aquaculture has increased markedly over the last few years with at least a trebling of the number of patents registered between the early 1990s and the mid naughties.

We searched using the key words ‘aquaculture’ and ‘fish farm’ to identify relevant documents from a number of data sets including US, Japan, Germany, EU and the World Intelllectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and INPADOC. The search produced just over three and a half thousand patent documents out of a total data set of over 50 million.

This bar chart shows the scale of the uplift in patenting activity we have witnessed within this data set.

We will analyse aquaculture patenting activity in greater depth in a series of forthcoming posts, so if this is of interest please stay tuned.

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The data generated here is supplied by Thomson Scientific using their patent data analytics suite. In this instance the Delphion product was used to generate the data.

I conducted a search to identify the organisations most active in seeking patent protection for aquaculture innovations.

My preliminary search used the key words ‘aquaculture’ and ‘fish farm’ to identify relevant documents from a number of data sets including US, Japan, Germany, EU and the World Intelllectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and INPADOC.

The search produced just over three and a half thousand patent documents out of a total data set of over 50 million.

The organisations with the most active patent portfolios are as follows:

NUTRECO AQUACULTURE RESEARCH    77
NORWEGIAN INSTITUTE OF FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE    30
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BIOTECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE     24
MARTEK BIOSCIENCES CORPORATION     19
SEABAIT LIMITED     17
WYETH     16
NORSK HYDRO    14
OMEGATECH    14
VELCRO INDUSTRIES    14
AQUACULTURE CRC    13
HENKEL KOMMANDITGESELLSCHAFT AUF AKTIEN     13
ASCOM NEXION    12
FISHFARM TECH    12
DSM IP ASSETS    11
MARICAL    11
OMS INVESTMENTS    11
BOARD OF REGENTS, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SYSTEM     10

The patent count that I have produced here is raw data on the number of patents across a number of jurisdictions.  As such it represents a measure of the investment that organisations are dedicating to intellectual property protection rather than a count of the number of individual inventions.

The data generated here is supplied by Thomson Scientific using their patent data analytics suite. In this instance the Delphion product was used to generate the data.

A series of patent documents outline a field of invention that may be part of the solution to the aquaculture feed protein and oil deficit. This deficit, derived from short supply of wild caught fish has the potential to undermine the growth of aquaculture.  

Finfish discussed the problems with the global supply of fish meal here.

Microalgae (single celled algae or phytoplankton) represent the largest, but most poorly understood, kingdom of microorganisms on the earth. As plants are to terrestrial animals, microalgae represent the natural nutritional base and primary source of all the phytonutrients in the aquatic food chain.

As the primary producers in the aquatic food chain, microalgae are the source of many phytonutrients, including docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA) precursors for the valuable nutritional component widely promoted as Omega 3 Fatty Acids.

Microalgae also represent a vast genetic resource, comprising in excess of 80,000 different species. 

Yeast, filamentous fungi, and bacteria are also in the direct food chain of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks. However, only a very few of these microbes, perhaps less than 10 species, have been exploited for aquaculture feeds.

These few species have been used primarily for historical reasons and ease of cultivation. They have not been chosen on the basis of any scientific evidence of superiority as nutritional or therapeutic supplements. 

The marine environment is filled with bacteria and viruses that can attack fish and shellfish, thereby devastating aquaculture farms very quickly. Bacteria and viruses can also attack single celled microalgae, so these organisms have evolved biochemical mechanisms to defend themselves from such attacks. Such mechanisms may involve the secretion of probiotic compounds that inhibit bacterial growth or viral attachment. 

Can you point to any additional material on algae as an aquaculture food source?

What do we know about optimising the economics of production?

What wholesale cost would the feed need to be produced at in order for the major feed companies to adopt this technology as a food component for aquaculture and other intensive forms of animal production?

The patent documents which describe this endeavour can be found here.

Advance Bionutrition Corp (the assignee of the patent is hot on the trail of non fish meal derived aquaculture feed.

Zeigler Bros in Gardners, Pensylvania, will be the first customer of Neptune Industries, a developer of sustainable solutions for aquaculture, headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, to purchase 40 tonnes per month of Ento-Protein™, an insect-based alternative to fishmeal.

Ento-Protein is a high quality sustainable protein derived from insects, which is intended to be a replacement for the rapidly depleting fishmeal made from wild caught feedstock species.

Founded in 1935, privately held Ziegler Bros is a manufacturer of high quality animal feeds.

Neptune plans on opening the first of its production facilities in late 2008. Deliveries are expected to begin by the end of this calendar year, following the establishment of pilot operations.

Neptune CEO Ernest D. Papadoyianis said, “The reception Neptune has received from around the world since introducing the product is extremely encouraging. Several other major feed producers have already requested samples.”

Organic designation
Papadoyianis said that recently issued guidelines and recommendations by the USDA Panel on organic standards for seafood, “Make me quite optimistic that standards will be promulgated for organic fishmeal. As the ‘first mover’ in this new product category, we have every reason to believe that Ento-Protein will then qualify for an organic designation.”

The company began a research and testing program for Ento-Protein with Mississippi State University in 2007, and recently completed the third stage of validation trials.

Neptune filed a provisional process patent in the Production and Processing of Select Insects into Protein Meal for Fish and Animal Diets in February 2006.

About Neptune Industries
Neptune Industries is a technology company which from inception has been committed to achieving sustainable, eco-friendly aquaculture by innovating and pioneering a “total and comprehensive integrated systems solution” approach to the mission critical challenges facing the Aquaculture Industry today.

The company operates a sustainable fish farming facility in Florida City, Florida called Blue Heron Aqua Farms, Inc. Blue Heron Aqua Farms currently is one of the leading producers of hybrid striped bass, which it markets nationally and internationally as Everglades Striped Bass.

More about the insect based protein source is available here.