The newly formed InnovaSea Systems Inc. plans to significantly grow its global open ocean aquaculture operations this year, after a merger between two U.S. firms, Ocean Farm Technologies in Morrill, Maine, and OceanSpar, Bainbridge Island, Wash.
OceanSpar brings the engineering resources, technology and research and development expertise to help Ocean Farm grow its global farming technology, Steve Page, general manager of Ocean Farm Technology and director of technology integration at InnovaSea, told SeafoodSource. Ocean Farm develops and markets Aquapod™ net pens and is developing technology for feeding and harvesting fish in open ocean systems.
“What we are doing through this merger is developing a turnkey, whole farm system, not just the net pens,” Page said. “Our goal is to support our customers through the grow-out cycle —from the moment a juvenile fish leaves the dock until it is on the harvest vessel heading to the processing plant,” added InnovaSea president, Langley Gace, in a statement.
Ocean Farm Technologies supplies open ocean technology to commercial aquaculture farms globally and operates two research and development open ocean farms — one in La Paz, Mexico that produces totoaba and one in Panama that is producing cobia (pictured).
The newly formed InnovaSea will conduct research and development that will lead to automated open-ocean farming systems, according to Page. “It will take us to a state of automation, compared to fish farms as they are currently realized. A lot of the systems — from cleaning to harvesting to feeding — will be automated.”
OceanSpar and Ocean Farm will merger their engineering teams and filed operations teams. “We will be adding a lot of people — building up the management and technical teams — as the year goes on,” Page said.
