SATS Interviews Scientist on Latest Advancements in Science and Technology to Support Sustainable Aquaculture

In celebration of Earth Month, Stronger America Through Seafood (SATS) interviewed Tyler Sclodnick, the Principal Scientist and Aquaculture Science Services Lead at Innovasea. Tyler discusses the continued advancements in science and technology that help to make aquaculture one of the most sustainable forms of protein production today and explains why the U.S. should support the expansion of an offshore aquaculture industry to increase our supply of healthful and affordable seafood.

Innovasea is a company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, with operations across the U.S., including in Louisiana, Maine, and Washington. It provides aquaculture solutions ranging from submersible cages to feeding systems to land-based facilities to environmental consulting.

 How do continued advancements in science and technology help to make aquaculture even more sustainable?

Research and development in the last few decades have positioned aquaculture as a sustainable form of protein production. Today, with computer modeling, Artificial Intelligence (AI), sensors, and camera systems, aquaculture farms are more sustainable than ever before. Innovasea is committed to sustainability, and our technology is helping farmers optimize performance to benefit the farmer’s bottom line and the environment ensuring good water quality and healthy fish.

Describe the technologies that Innovasea offers for fish farmers. How do they work?

Innovasea offers a wide array of technologies for different problems and farm environments. We are actively innovating in several areas, but I want to focus on our Open Ocean Aquaculture solutions to highlight some exciting new technology.

Precision aquaculture is a fully integrated system that’s helping revolutionize open ocean aquaculture. Innovasea offers sophisticated sensors and high-resolution cameras that provide real-time visibility into feeding so that farmers can improve their efficiency and optimize growth. High-quality feeds are an expensive cost for farmers. Our feed cameras support AI capabilities so farmers can optimize the feeding protocols for their fish, reducing waste and boosting their profits. Innovasea is building on water temperature and dissolved oxygen data from sensors to create deeper insights into fish growth. We are using this data to forecast temperature stress or hypoxia events before they start to stress fish. With our communications systems, farmers have an accurate inventory of fish stocks underwater and can conduct fish growth modeling in real-time. 

We’re also very excited about our cage technology. Last year, we released a new pen model, the SeaProtean, which looks and operates like a surface pen, but has a unique submergence system to avoid storms. This reduces the chance of escapes in storm events, and it also allows a farmer to react to temperature changes or harmful algal blooms that can stress fish.

Finally, we offer state-of-the-art computer modeling that allows us to provide a new farm with insight into how they might perform financially and environmentally. With this technology, we can answer different questions from “Is there road access to this site?” to “How will the strong currents impact farm operations, as well as determine how many fish can be grown to optimize profitability while protecting water quality so that the growing fish can thrive in clean water?"

What does the future hold for aquaculture technology?

At Innovasea, we believe that there is space for all production methods to succeed. We anticipate more farms using RAS and open ocean technology to come online and produce significant volumes of seafood, and this will enable further development of technologies to lower the cost of entry and enable higher-margin production.

One major area where farms, specifically net pen farms, can use technology to be more efficient is in feed delivery. Precision feeding allows farmers to reduce their feed waste, which helps to support good water quality in the farm and surrounding waters. Further, computer modeling shows how many fish can be raised in an area and still have good water quality. These rapidly advancing technologies add to the sustainability of an American aquaculture industry, building the case for more offshore farms in the U.S.

Why should the U.S. expand offshore aquaculture?

The U.S. has the largest domestic seafood market, ample water resources, and skilled personnel, which are the three biggest hurdles that other countries face in developing an open ocean aquaculture industry. The U.S. coasts are largely exposed and have a lot of competition for nearshore space so most future aquaculture development will likely utilize open ocean systems. This is an opportunity to develop a major industry that will strengthen coastal communities, supplement the value chain and share resources with wild fisheries, improve food security, and reduce the imports of seafood products from sources that don’t meet U.S. environmental standards. The decision to not support a mariculture industry does not protect the ocean, it only shifts the burden of production to places that are not subject to U.S. oversight. U.S. consumers will get their seafood either way, but without a domestic industry they will be paying a higher price, releasing more carbon transporting product, and not having confidence in how their seafood is produced.

 What is a common misconception about the sustainability of offshore aquaculture?

I often engage with people who want to limit aquaculture production because they believe that fish farming inherently reduces biodiversity and degrades ecosystem health. Many are picturing a coral reef, seagrass meadows, or a kept forest when they think of the ocean and want to protect those habitats, which is a very valid opinion. However, these ecosystems are relatively rare, particularly in waters deeper than 40m. I do a lot of site selection studies which always include video surveys of the ocean floor. We observe the same trends; empty sand or muddy bottom with little wildlife. These habitats have low biodiversity, are naturally robust to stressors, and don’t often contain unique or threatened species. Given that our food has to come from somewhere and the per capita demand for protein is increasing, these habitats should be prioritized for farming. Net pen aquaculture can produce significantly more protein per area than any terrestrial farming method, so farming in nutrient-poor, muddy bottom marine habitats (which are ideal for fish farms) can disproportionately reduce pressure on whatever other habitats are currently being used to produce our beef, pork, and chicken.