Hawaii-based Kona Blue Water Farms on Tuesday announced it has begun switching its open-ocean aquaculture operations to surface cages from its current submersible cages.
The company, which raises Kona Kampachi®, a yellowtail relative, said the transition is part an effort to increase its efficiency operationally.
“[The transition] will reduce diver time and let us move to larger, more robust pens,” Kona Blue President Neil Sims told SeafoodSource on Wednesday. “Overall there will be less labor for net pen maintenance per fish that we grow.”
There will be a total of four cages, and the company hopes to stock the first cage in August, added Sims. There currently is no timeline for the remaining cages to be operational.
Sims said production will drop during the switch, to about 350 tons this year, down from 500 tons last year. But he predicts that next year production will return to 2008 levels.
The surface pens are manufactured by Norwegian company PolarCirkle, a division of AKVA, and are a hybrid of Norwegian and Japanese technologies. The special mesh material used, Kikko net, is more resistant to predation, is easier to clean and holds its shape better against currents.
“These changes are in keeping with Kona Blue’s innovative approaches to developing new technologies for open-ocean mariculture,” said Sims. “It is adaptive, responsive management of our net pens and part of our drive or continually improving our methods.”
