Further and Deeper -- Developing Technology for Next-Generation Mariculture

In order to keep pace with growing global demand for seafood, marine aquaculture will have to expand. The vast majority of mariculture is conducted in protected embayments and estuaries, where farm effluent accumulation and interactions with wild stocks can cause environmental disruptions. To produce marine fish on the scale required by global demand, there is only one real solution: mariculture must move further offshore, into the deeper waters of the open oceans. Here, the tremendous assimilative capability of the sea is in full effect, potentially allowing a responsible mariculture operation to produce delicous, healthy fish with virtually no negative impacts to the ocean environment.

With the Velella Project, Kampachi Farms and its partners are taking the lead in the development of technologies to support true open-ocean mariculture.

Named for a genus of small drifting pelagic hydrozoan, the Velella Project is the world's first "beta-test" of an unanchored free-drifting oceanic fish culture system. The Velella array consists of a 132 cubic meter brass-netted Aquapod® net pen produced by Ocean Farm Technologies, of Maine attached by a combined towing/umbilical line to the 65-foot staysail schooner S/V Machias, which serves as the farm tender, dive platform, crew quarters, and operations center. By drifting on the ocean currents in waters two to three miles deep, the Velella is essentially "perpetually fallow", with no direct connection between the seafloor and the farm. No build up of effluent, no impact to wild stocks -- just clean fish growing in clean water.

In May 2011, the Velella was deployed from the harbor at Kawahihae, Hawaii into the open ocean West of Hawaii Island. In July 2011, the Velella was stocked with around 2,000 Kampachi fingerlings. These fish, the first ever raised in a drifting pelagic farm, accheived outstanding health and growth performance, reaching the usual harvest size by December, 2011. Roughly half of the fish were harvested to reduce the density inside the cage, and the remainder were harvested in mid-February 2012.


In addition to proving the feasibility of farming fish in the pelagic environment, the Velella has been used by Kampachi Farms and project partner Lockheed-Martin as a test platform for various supporting technologies. Ranging from automated feeder systems and robotic cage cleaners to satellite communications, these are the innovations that will be necessary make commercial-scale open ocean farming a reality. The next phase of Velella research will focus on replicating the outstanding biolgocial results of the drifter trial while using a single point mooring (SPM) system to facilitate the further development of automation and remote control technologies. By building on this sucessful research, and pioneering the permitting pathway for such operations with U.S. government agencies, Kampachi Farms will lead the push of next generation mariculture over the blue horizon.

This research is only made possible through the generous and visionary support of the following organizations:

The National Science Foundation

The Illinois Soybean Association

The International Copper Association

Ocean Farm Technologies