Fishing for oxygen
The OxyVision controlled oxygen-injection system for offshore fish farms already have hundreds of installations around the world. Photo: Trelleborg AB
In Norway, aquaculture expert OxSeaVision and Trelleborg have teamed up to develop a system that pumps oxygen into offshore fish farms, helping fish remain healthy and grow bigger.
OxSeaVision made a commercial breakthrough towards the end of 2007 with the OxyVision controlled oxygen-injection system for offshore fish farms and already has hundreds of installations around the world. Pumping oxygen into fish pens to help keep fish healthy and allow them to grow bigger, the system is built exclusively with customised Trelleborg rubber hoses, fittings and connectors.
Oxygen is vital for all animals. In a fish pen, soluble oxygen can be adversely affected by salinity or other factors such as the number of fish, the season, seaweed blooms and so on.
The core problem is that fish need more oxygen as the water temperature increases. However, as the water temperature increases, the available oxygen and its solubility in water decreases.
Oxygenating a fish pen with a standard hose in the open sea would create such big bubbles that they would float to the surface and dissipate into the air, bypassing the fish.
The resulting unique OxyVision system consists of a grid of rubber hoses that is sunk about 10 meters down inside a net pen. Pure oxygen is then pumped through the system for dispersion throughout the whole volume of the pen. Micro pores ensure that oxygen is properly dissolved in the water and is spread vertically over large areas.
When the company was started, little academic or technical research had been done on the effects of low oxygen on fish performance. OxSeaVision, worked with EWOS Innovation, the world’s second-largest feed producer for fish farming and Rogaland Research, an independent Norwegian research institute, to do its own research.
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