Re-imagining aquaculture: inventing low-impact, offshore mobile technology that transforms finfish production

Re-imagining Aquaculture will deliver new technologies for offshore finfish aquaculture, providing New Zealand with opportunities to significantly increase high-value finfish production with a minimal environmental footprint. Conventional inshore finfish aquaculture will be complimented by the development of a Mobile Autonomous Production System (MAPS) that uses New Zealand’s abundance of clean, open waters to produce resilient, optimally growing fish within a sustainable and scalable production system. By taking the lead in technology development we will also ensure that enabling technology for off-shore aquaculture is well suited to New Zealand conditions and at the same time create opportunities for high-value support industries based in New Zealand, with potential for significant global exports. Scientific knowledge critical to the design and operation of our systems (e.g. materials science, hydrodynamics, species specific requirements) will be generated from engineering and oceanographic evaluations of our designs, as well as eco-physiological and behavioural assessments of fish performance and welfare. We will use King salmon and tamure/snapper as exemplar species for MAPS technology development, placing fish biology at the heart of the design process and aligning with principles of kaitiakitanga. New knowledge of optimal conditions for fish, and new methods to remotely monitor fish, will be developed. We will evaluate the economic, operational and environmental feasibility of our systems, whilst developing implementation pathways for downstream technological development. Our vision is to develop a scalable production system which will make offshore finfish aquaculture accessible to a wide range of New Zealand investors and produce significant benefits to the broader New Zealand economy.