A concrete plan for Scottish salmon farming
The plan for a Scottish-designed concrete closed containment pen for salmon farming will be presented at a free webinar tomorrow.
Greg Riddle, a director of Fort William-based Northern Light Consulting, will speak about the SeaCAP 6000, a 6,000m³ pen concept from Inverness company Aqua Innovation Ltd.
Aqua Innovation Ltd has secured funding via the UK Seafood Innovation Fund to undertake the detailed design stage of the SeaCAP 6000, which could be used to grow salmon smolts to full harvest weight.
QED Naval is responsible for the naval architecture and hydrodynamics for the project, and Sterner AquaTech is designing the water quality and life support systems.
On-land advantages with a cheaper price tag
The SeaCAP 6000 aims to provide the advantages of on-land salmon farming - controlled water quality and exclusion of external biological factors which can impact on fish health – at a much lower cost. Faeces and waste feed can be captured and disposed of safely. The pen can float or be moored to the seabed.
Because the design is modular, it can easily be adapted to make larger pens for growing fish to harvest size.
The concept comes from veteran maritime innovator Rodger Taylor, who designed and made the first SeaCAP feed barges and is a director of Aqua Innovation and an associated company, Concrete Marine Solutions Ltd.
Trials facility
Tomorrow’s webinar on the subject of aquaculture and sustainable fish production runs from 10am-11.15am and also features presentations on a new multi-species marine aquaculture trials facility, and listeria salmon detection. Register for the webinar here.
The webinar is presented by the Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation Centre (Agri-EPI Centre), which aims to accelerate the research, development and adoption of precision agriculture and engineering technology and is based at the Easter Bush Campus, Roslin, near Edinburgh.
