Future trends: increased importance of aquaculture engineering

Future trends: increased importance of aquaculture engineering

Growth in the global aquaculture industry will certainly continue, with several factors contributing to this. The world’s population continues to grow as will the need for marine protein. Traditional fisheries have limited opportunities to increase their catches if sustainable fishing is to be carried out. Eventually, therefore, increase in production must come from the aquaculture industry. In addition, the aquaculture industry can deliver aquatic products of good quality all year round, which represents a marketing advantage compared to traditional fishing. The increased focus on optimal human diets, including more fish than meat in the diet for large groups of the world’s population, also requires more fish to be marketed.

This will give future challenges for aquaculture engineers. Most probably there will be an increased focus on intensive aquaculture with higher production per unit volume. Important challenges to housing the growth will be availability of fresh-water resources and good sites for cage farming. Limited supplies of freshwater in the world mean that technology that can reduce water consumption per kilogram of fish produced will be important; this includes reliable, cost effective re-use technology. By employing re-use technology it will also be possible to maintain a continuous supply of high quality water independently of the quality of the incoming water. To have more accurate control over water quality will also be of major importance when establishing aquaculture with new species, especially during the fry production stage.

The trend to use more and more weather-exposed sites for cage farms will continue. Development of cages that can not only withstand adverse weather conditions but also be operated easily in bad weather, and where fish feeding and control can be performed, is important.

Rapid developments in electronics and monitoring will gradually become incorporated into the aquaculture industry. Intensive aquaculture will develop into a process industry where the control room will be the centre of operations and processes will be monitored by electronic instruments; robots will probably be used to replace some of today’s manual functions. Nanotechnology will be included, for instance by using more and smallersensors for more purposes. An example would be to include sensors in mooring lines and net bags to monitor tension and eventual breakage. Individual tagging of the fish will most probably also be a future possibility, which makes control of the welfare of the single individual possible; this can also be important regarding control of escaped fish.