Session: 13-01-02 Blue Economy II

Paper Number: 123694

123694 - Reducing Risk in Design and Operation of Ocean Aquaculture 

INTRODUCTION

Better fish welfare, less conflicts with interests in the ocean space as well as possibility to scale up output volume without compromising environmental sustainability are some of the advantages with offshore fish farming. As the world’s population grows, the options for producing enough food are becoming limited. The oceans offer a vast opportunity to meet this demand with sustainable, safe and efficient offshore fish farming, but how do we maintain safety of asset, personnel and prevent fish escape for these exposed high volume, advanced fish farms?
Adding safety to offshore fish farming projects is mainly ensured by providing uniformity, transparency, and predictability and thereby reducing project risk. We need to be ensured that facilities for aquaculture can handle harsh environment and still contain the fish safely.

 

 

MAIN APPROACH

The main areas of concern when it comes to ensuring safe and reliable offshore fish farming units may be categories into: Asset integrity, personnel safety, fish welfare and prevention of fish escape.

Asset integrity includes structural strength, stability, mooring, technical arrangement, and solutions on board together with reliability of essential equipment installed.

Personnel safety is mainly addressing arrangement for emergency escape and fire safety. This included lifesaving appliances, launching equipment and similar as well as fire detection and -extinguishing. It is common to apply well know maritime codes as acceptance criteria for personnel safety. SOLAS is a good example followed by local flag- or shelf states interpretation of requirements embedded in this maritime code.

Fish welfare and requirements related to this varies depending on local authorities. It is essential to verify the reliability of technology utilized to monitor environment of the fish. Instrumentation indicating oxygen level, temperature, salinity, turbidity is subject for special attention. Maximum acceptable level of biomass is also a crucial parameter that needs to be monitored.

Fish control or prevention of escape is the main function of a fish farming unit. Structural integrity of net system and ropes together with capability of fish transfer systems are crucial items in fish control. Flexible net systems utilized in rigid high volume steel fish farming installation has proven to be exposed to fatigue and need to be attended to in particular. Wear and tear of net due to cleaning and handling is also a concern. Several of reported incidents related to fish escape happens while handling of fish – for example crowding due to de-licing or transfer. Equipment contributing to these operations needs to be specially attended to.

The four different items are considered equally important for safe and sustainable fish farming offshore. These elements are also closely interconnected where integrity of one may support several others.

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

There is a significant potential to utilize competence from traditional offshore and maritime industry to help operators of exposed fish farming units to identify operational risks by applying technical rules and requirements from classification. As opposed to the offshore oil and gas industry, classification may not be obligatory in aquaculture, but it turns out that many developers and operators nonetheless choose to follow class requirements and recommendations.

Combining the well-known classification concept from maritime industry with balanced aquaculture-based requirements provides a robust and cost-efficient solutions to reducing risk in operation of ocean fish farming installations.

Presenting Author: Per Arild Åland DNV

Presenting Author Biography: Mr. Per Arild Aland have been working with advanced offshore service vessels and offshore installations as well as digitization for most of his 25 years in the marine & offshore industry.
Supply chain management, capability review of suppliers & shipyards, CE-marking, risk assessments and system/software integrity have been main activities throughout his career.

The last few years Mr. Aland has been involved in ensuring safety and operational excellence in the emerging segments of offshore renewable and exposed fish farming/aquaculture.
Currently he is attending to Offshore Classification and Business Development at DNV Head Office, Oslo.

Authors:

Per Arild Åland DNV