Onshore, inshore, offshore

Well, in my opinion such conferences' main usefulness lays in general and personal meetings among suppliers and producers of materials and equipment, as well as between the producers, their market channels and direct clients. This will show in their business, but I doubt that much of it would be reported in the press.

The secondary usefulness is in exchange of ideas. Nowadays, in contrary to the old-time FAO meetings, the participants are rather tight-lipped about their technical solutions and methods. I found that even the outing of the participants to the processing plant and the sea farm carried little technical information – just PR. This, apart from the gear suppliers, who might have reported a bit more than one finds in their advertising and commercial information. On the other hand, there was some futurology, which could be opening some minds towards new directions.

‘Offshore’
‘Offshore’ is a somewhat fuzzy expression interpreted either according to individual understanding and common sense, or the interests of the parties involved in the mariculture business. According to Neil Sims from Kampachi Farms, who chaired the conference, the main criteria of ‘offshore fish farming’ is that it's sited at a certain minimum distance from the coastline where there's significant flow of water through the cages, so that the fish bio-products and remains of their fodder disperse widely and do not create polluted, dead bottom spots underneath. In Turkey, for example, farms must be located at least 0.6nm offshore, over a depth of at least 30m, with minimum flow of 0.1m/sec.

According to the Bremerhaven Declaration, the legal framework available for the development of open-water mariculture is incomplete. As far as the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is concerned, the terms ‘Open Ocean Aquaculture’ as well as ‘offshore’ have no truly legal meaning. Legally, for marine aquaculture located within the territorial waters of the coastal EEZ and the continental shelf the term ‘EEZ aquaculture’ is more appropriate. Therefore, governments should see to it that potential investors from the beginning have a clear legal structure and that terminology fits the legal situation in compliance with international and national rules and standards.

Whatever the semantics, offshore mariculture keeps growing, in spite of the continuing criticism and unremitting resistance to inshore mariculture by other shareholders, such as the fishing and tourist industries, and marine traffic. Its further development, however, is going to be increasingly controlled by a dynamic combination of many factors, some of which are: (a) demand and consumer preferences; (b) the size of the market that will be able to pay prices needed to cover high production costs; (c) the availability of forage fish for reduction; (d) development of and demand for efficient vegetable feeds combined with technologies enabling conversion of increasing amounts of today's ‘industrial’ fish into foodfish, and improved feed conversion efficiency; (e) fishmeal and other feeds prices and the play between them.

Another important problem is the associated high cost of investing in and operating offshore mariculture including those of labour and sea-going craft necessary for regular monitoring and maintenance. Consequently, offshore mariculture must rear high value species, and must strive for increased feed efficiency and emphasis on strains that can grow on little if any fishmeal.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that offshore mariculture presents numerous opportunities, in spite of the constraints to its development. Probably the most important one is development of advanced technology, namely design and mode of operation enabling floating fish farms to survive in often hostile conditions of open sea. Those are still being developed and experimentally tested. For example, MIT has just completed in Puerto Rico the first round of experiments with Self Propelling Fish Farm Prototype. One vision is an advanced fish farm that can “think for itself”. It will be able to float to more optimal locations when required and submerge when exposed to rough weather. Even though unlikely to be a reality for at least 10 or 15 years, most of the technology for fish farms drifting in the open sea is already available.

Employment
At another level, marine aquaculture may represent a way for investment for redundant capture fishing capital and a second line of defense to displaced fishermen by providing employment. All this may make fishing people consider and seek employment in the marine farming industry, and in particular – in offshore cage farms, where seamanship, sea legs, boat-operation and net-making and net-mending skills represent important advantages.

Besides, offshore fish farming can boast some substantial advantages. In oligotrophic (low natural productivity) seas, mentioned by Mr Sims, by enriching its immediate surroundings open-ocean mariculture may become beneficial also to the environment; fish rally by the farms, both to feed on what is flushed off the cages and due to a FAD effect, that's the nature of many fish species to be attracted to floating objects. Actual observations tend to confirm those assumptions. Additional advantage is that the water quality offshore is better than in near-shore areas that often are polluted by agricultural, industrial and municipal run-off.

Fish farmed in the sea resist unfavourable environmental changes in water better than wild fish. This, because the wild fishes' food base would be reduced, if forage organisms are seriously affected by such changes. Their displacement or disappearance may cause wild population's migration or starvation or both. Farmed fish are supplied with their food whatever happens in the surrounding water and would suffer only at the extremes of their physiological survival range.

The good news for farmed fish producers is that fish prices in real terms are predicted to increase; high-value finfish and crustaceans, such as grown in floating cages, by 15%, low value foodfish by 7%, and fishmeal and oil by 18%. The bad news is for the poor people; they would have to pay more for even the cheapest fish. But, these are not problems for such conferences to resolve.