Bridgeport (WTNH) - The calendar may say January but it's never too soon to make sure boats are safe. The Coast Guard is inspecting commercial vessels even during the dead of winter.

Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Sweeney knows boats inside and out -- that's his job. Wednesday he brought News Channel 8 along as he inspected the Catherine Moore; it's the boat kids at Bridgeport's Aquaculture School use to learn about the Long Island Sound.

"I have a list of other countries who don't have a good inspection program," Chief Sweeney, of the U.S. Coast Guard, said. "Hundreds and hundreds of people are dying every single year because they don't have [an] adequate inspection program."

That's why the Coast Guard wants you to know that even in the depths of winter, they are out inspecting commercial vessels and making sure everything is up to code from safety features, to running drills with a rescue dummy, to counting life jackets.

"Plenty of life jackets," Chief Sweeney said as he inspects the boat. "They're required to have type 1's. These guys have type 2's."

And during the rescue mission, Liz Kranyik finds the dummy. She's a teacher at the Aquaculture School and frequent crew member.

Because the rescue boat is affiliated with a school, the exercise is in case a student falls overboard during a class. If you think that's never going to happen, well, think about the ferry boats in New York City last week and how they had to do the same drill.

The ferry crews rescued the passengers of flight 1549 out of the Hudson so fast because the Coast Guard makes them do rescue drills every month, just like the Catherine Moore.

"The rescue went well. He is out of the water," Liz Kranyik said of the dummy. "He was out of the water in a reasonable period of time. He did not get hypothermia."

All this drilling and inspecting happens year-round. Even far from boating season, in the middle of winter.

Source:http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/news_wtnh_bridgeport_coast_guard_inspection_200901211821_rev1

Even in a modern age awash in technology and precision control, the world’s seafood harvesters continue to operate as hunter-gatherers on a mass scale. This alarming reality has created a serious near-term threat to the survival of the ocean ecosystem. Wild fisheries are being depleted at a devastating rate - fish are caught well before they can mature and reproduce, subsequently, population numbers are in rapid decline, and soon, demand will far exceed this primitive system’s capacity to sustainably provide seafood.

The solution to this impending global crisis lies in the domesticated production of seafood in an environmentally appropriate and economically feasible manner. To that end, Hawaii Oceanic Technology, Inc. has created the Oceansphere™. A revolution in open ocean aquaculture technology, the Oceansphere™ makes farming fish in the open ocean a practical reality.

Self-sustaining and untethered to the ocean floor, the Oceansphere™ is designed to produce large harvests in a very small footprint. For example, twelve Oceanspheres in less than half of a square mile can yield as much as 24,000 tons of seafood. The Oceansphere™ is powered by a patent pending hybrid ocean thermal energy conversion system that does not depend on fossil fuels, so the entire system operates with minimal environmental impact.

Designed to operate offshore in deep water, this next-generation architecture exploits the expansive dimension the ocean affords and in doing so, stands to provide quality seafood in quantities that dwarf existing alternatives. The large size of the Oceansphere offers lower stocking densities so fish can grow in a more healthy environment. Additionally, a carefully controlled food supply avoids the contaminant absorption found in wild fish and ensures a safer end product.

Our Solution

Hawaii Oceanic Technology is devoted to ocean stewardship and best aquaculture practices. Hawaii is known as the “Silicon Valley” of aquaculture.

Under the advisorship of some of the best minds in ocean science and marine engineering, our Oceansphere™ technology is poised to revolutionize open ocean fish farming with an elegant, practical and responsible solution. The core intellectual property and key to the Oceansphere™ is our exclusive patent pending hybrid ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) power plant that generates 100% of the electricity necessary to geostatically position the 82,500 cubic-meter Oceansphere™.

In addition to the OTEC power plant, our patent pending design includes twenty-one unique innovations that pertain to robotics, geostatic positioning, inertial navigation telemetry and environmentally responsible fish rearing. By leveraging such breadth of expertise and intellectual property, the Oceansphere™ is able to support a self-sustaining deep water environment nearly ten times larger than any contemporary tethered cage. The massive scale and deep water operation of this technology affords many benefits, all of which combine to provide an economically viable and environmentally sustainable method to meet society’s ever-growing demand for seafood.

In addition to licensing our proprietary technologies worldwide, Hawaii Oceanic Technology will farm our King Ahi™ brand of tuna in Hawaii’s pristine waters.

Source: http://www.hioceanictech.com/home.aspx

Resolute Marine Energy, Inc. of Watertown, Mass. has a system, which makes use of a buoy undulating on the ocean's surface to create a pumping action with an arm to a platform below.

Bill Staby, CEO of Resolute Marine, said currents were unexpectedly strong at the site of deployment, near the mouth of the Merrimack River, and a mooring line snapped, ending the test before the converter made it into the water.

Staby said his company will try again, probably next month.

Resolute Marine's wave power converter could be used in conjunction with offshore wind farms to even out the surges of power generated by wind, but its first application is powering aquaculture pens, which are used for producing fish.

"We are going to try to develop wave energy for cost-effective utility scale grid energy," said Staby, but he added: "Aquaculture needs power now to move offshore." Staby's converter was developed in part by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Cliff Goudey, with a $90,000 Phase I grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and converts wave power to compressed air power.

Steve Page, CEO of Ocean Farm Technologies, Inc. of Searsmont, Maine, is now a lead manager on the project. Page has developed a 64-foot, 3,600-cubic-meter cage made of polyethylene and wire mesh to grow fish deep in the ocean.

"As finfish aquaculture moves into deeper ocean sites, we will need sustained, autonomous sources of power," Page said.

quaPod net pens are designed to be moored at a stationary, licensed site at a depth near 100 feet.

Staby's converter creates compressed air that could power auto-feed systems, lower the cage, or in the future, power propellers to move the cage from place to place.

Goudey developed a propulsion system consisting of twin, 8-foot, 6.2-horsepower propellers that can power the cage out to its station in the ocean. The system was demonstrated on AquaPod last year at SnapperFarm, Inc. in Puerto Rico.

Ocean Farm has sold the $135,000 cage to fish farmers in Puerto Rico, Panama, Mexico and South Korea, but so far it has been sold independently of the propulsion system.

George Nardi, chief technology officer for GreatBay Aquaculture, LLC, a land-based fish hatchery in Portsmouth, wants to put the AquaPod into commercial use this spring at a moored site near Sorrento, Maine.

Nardi said once the company has learned to safely operate the AquaPod, the cage could be used to farm fish off the coasts of New England.

Source: http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Harnessing+of+ocean+energy+in+experiment&articleId=55e5fc0c-450b-486a-9532-063697c366f9

And the most viable alternatives for aquaculture, experts say, could be tasty sea scallops or mussels.

Chris Langdon, an Oregon State University professor of fisheries and wildlife who coordinated a public forum in Newport in the fall on offshore aquaculture, says the development of a new shellfish industry has fewer social, political and environmental obstacles than other alternatives, and could be complementary to existing and future enterprises.

“Scallops and mussels can grow well in Northwest waters and since there is very little commercial harvest, they wouldn’t create competition with an established industry,” said Langdon, who directs the Molluscan Broodstock Program at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. “In fact, a scallop or mussel fishery could result in a synergistic opportunity for crabbers or other fishermen with limited seasons. They have the boats, the skill and the manpower to make such an enterprise conceivable.”

Several obstacles have to be overcome before a new industry could be established, Langdon said, including engaging industry and community leaders, developing a culturing system that can survive the rugged Pacific Ocean, adapting effective breeding and growing techniques, creating a viable business model, and evaluating potential environmental impacts.

Langdon says a three- to four-year demonstration project would be an ideal way to analyze the pros and cons of establishing a new venture.

“What we need next,” he said, “is a funding source and a coastal community with a vision.”

Potential funding sources could come from a combination of state and federal sources and private industry, Langdon said.

Oregon’s only major marine aquaculture effort today focuses on oysters, which are grown commercially in a handful of coastal estuaries. OSU’s Molluscan Broodstock Program was established in 1995 to work with the West Coast oyster industry to improve the commercial success of Pacific oysters through breeding selection.

Langdon says similar aquaculture practices could be applied to rearing sea scallops and mussels, though they would be grown offshore instead of in estuaries. Mussels and scallops usually are grown on long-lines or in lantern-nets in the United States and in many other countries. In New Zealand, for example, the annual farm-gate value of green-lipped mussels cultured in nearshore waters is more than $100 million.

Oregon had a sizeable population of scallops in the 1980s, but a lack of regulation over their management led to an over-harvest from which they have yet to recover. Nevertheless, their one-time success suggests that they can and will grow in the waters off Oregon, Langdon said.

“In choosing a site for a test project, we would have to be conscious of other uses,” Langdon said. “One of the first steps would be to meet with commercial and recreational fishing industries to make sure there wouldn’t be any conflicts with crabbers and other fishermen. The support of the community would be vital.”

Structures built for future wind or wave energy farms could be adapted for aquaculture use, Langdon pointed out. The biggest question, he added, would be whether such an enterprise could work economically.

“You should be able to adapt commercial oyster hatcheries to produce the larvae and seed, but offshore grow-out systems that can survive the rough ocean are not presently available in the Pacific Northwest,” Langdon said. “The question is whether you can do all this and compete economically with China, which has a huge shellfish aquaculture industry and cheap labor. We don’t know the answer, which is why we need a demonstration project.

“We would need to know such things as how often long-lines or lantern-nets have to be cleaned to prevent fouling,” he added. “We need to know if sea birds or other creatures would take a predatory interest in cultured shellfish. We can guess at the outcomes, but we won’t know until we try.”

Michael Morrissey, director of OSU’s Seafood Laboratory in Astoria and the Food Innovation Center in Portland, says consumers are willing to pay a premium for fresh, local seafood.

“Chile and Peru, which have similar water temperatures to Oregon, have active scallop industries,” Morrissey said. “Scallops are a high-end seafood item that could be an attractive aquaculture option.”

Langdon helped coordinate the offshore aquaculture forum in the fall because, he says, the timing is right to at least explore the potential of developing a new industry. The world’s population growth is creating unmet demands for seafood and the United States increasingly is importing products because its capture fisheries are at or above sustainable limits.

“The Northwest fishing industry historically has not been supportive of raising marine fish through aquaculture practices,” Langdon said, “but scallops, mussels and other shellfish may create opportunities for their participation without being a threat to their livelihood. The industry will have to decide whether offshore aquaculture represents an unwelcome competitor, or an alternative way to pursue a livelihood.”

Courtesy http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/8869/oregon-aquaculture-a-community-with-a-vision

The 6,560 fish, which were nearing maturity, escaped from a large hole in a net from a sea site at Oldany, near Drumbeg.

There have been four incidents of fish escaping from Loch Duart since 2000 involving nearly 45,000 fish.

Scientists have warned that farmed salmon can have a negative effect on the population of wild salmon.

The escapees have the potential to transmit disease and mate with wild stock leading to a contamination of the gene pool.

Nick Joy, managing director of Loch Duart, told the Northern Times: "Weather conditions in the area have been extraordinarily bad and we fear that these conditions may have caused a weakening in an area of the net that a seal then found and tore."

The company has said that it invested in robust infrasture for the site as it is subject to high peaking waves.

Mr Joy explained: "We acquired the strongest pens we could find and created a high specification net system for Oldany, but it has not been enough.

"Only 20 per cent of the stock remain to be harvested and the site has done well till now. To get so close to the finishing line and then for this to happen is hard to bear."

He added:"It is a given that all at Loch Duart deeply regret this position. It is doubly so when we have already decided to change designs for the next input. In the end there is nothing but to accept responsibility that we did our best and it wasn't good enough."

The results were attributed to upgrades in processing technology allowing the industry to meet global market requirements, said former deputy minister of fisheries Nguyen Thi Hong Minh at a conference in Hanoi late last week.

With trade promotion efforts, seafood exporters found more foreign outlets and the Vietfish International held annually in HCM City for the past 10 years became an annual rendezvous for industry professionals from around the world, Minh said.

Major customers included the EU, accounting for 27 percent of export market share, Japan and the Republic of Korea, 19 percent each, and the US, 13 percent, she said.

With shrimp remaining Viet Nam’s key export product, tra and basa catfish export value continued to rise annually, earning a value equal to that of shrimp by the middle of last year.

Raising the awareness of seafood industry personnel about the need to ensure the safety and hygiene of products was also a significant factor in the success of the seafood industry, said Nguyen Tu Cuong, director of the Centre for Technology Transfer and Fisheries Services under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

But Cuong also admitted that Viet Nam’s fisheries sector was still weak in competitiveness and management, despite its efforts to apply modern technology.

The industry also lacked a proper organisation to effectively manage food safety and hygiene and support industries such as feed, chemicals, packaging, ice, fishing ports and markets.

The seafood sector is set to achieve US$4 billion in export revenue in 2009, representing 9.6 percent growth over the past year, the ministry said

Spain is also starting to look for Tilapia supplies. A major Spanish company is conducting studies on the potential for Tilapia production in Mozambique and Namibia. The same company owns a huge production plant in Brazil, with a capacity to produce 10,000 tonnes of Tilapia a year, reports Business Standard.

According to Business Standard, this was primarily caused by the extremely cold winter during early 2008 in China, wiping out whole production areas. The news organisation claims that this led to an increase in the price of Tilapia. At the same time, production in other major countries remained almost the same or slightly higher. The forecast indicates normal production in China this year and some level of softening of prices.