Mowi Canada West has chosen Vancouver, Canada-based Poseidon Ocean Systems’ oxygen technology for the company’s Monday Rock salmon farm off Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
Poseidon Ocean Systems has installed perimeter bubble curtains, 15-meter-deep barrier shields, and oxygen systems with real-time environmental monitoring technology at the aquaculture site. The combination of both physical and bubble barriers, along with the oxygen system, will help the farm avoid interactions with wild salmon and reduce the threats such as plankton blooms, hypoxia, and sea lice.
“Three-quarters of the farm’s enclosure is physically separated from the surrounding environment to a depth of 15 meters, so this technology developed by Poseidon is critical to allow us to create healthy living conditions within the space where we raise our salmon,” Mowi Technical Manager Rodrigo Cristi said in a release. “The salmon have been growing in the system for six months now and fish condition, which includes size and health, are looking very promising so far.”
The new Poseidon technology, according to Mowi, is efficient enough to avoid some of the issues with other similar systems which end up coming with matching environmental costs due to higher energy use. The monitoring technology coupled with the Poseidon-developed “Flowpressor” and “Oxypressor” systems allows the company to produce oxygen as required, saving energy and also ensuring no oxygen is wasted.
“Our company has been focused on developing our integrated technology platform which gives farmers more control over the farm environment; allowing for better control of the conditions within the net pens, so that the farmers can more actively and positively affect the welfare of the fish they grow,” Poseidon Co-Founder and CTO Matt Clarke said in a release. “Since our company was founded in 2015, Poseidon has been focused on bringing a science-based, aquaculture-specific approach to this challenge and the system now installed at Mowi’s farm site was developed by our engineers for this application.”
Salmon aquaculture operations in British Columbia have faced a tumultuous few years as the Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans has pushed to reduce or eliminate all in-ocean net-pen salmon farming in the region. The department has already denied license renewals in the Discovery Islands, located in British Columbia, and the BC Salmon Farmers Association has expressed “grave concerns” that the Canada Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Joyce Murray is planning to completely close all salmon farming in B.C.
Part of its push to close farming stems from the potential for aquaculture operations to interact with wild salmon, according to the DFO.
While the new Mowi technology will reduce interactions with wild salmon, Mowi Canada West Director of Communications Ian Roberts told SeafoodSource the new technology is not related to the current efforts by DFO.
“This type of technological development has been something the sector has been researching, trialing, and implementing over the past 10 to 20 years,” Roberts said. “Minimizing or eliminating interactions with the wider environment is what salmon farmers have been focused on years prior to this politically motivated campaign.”
The new installation uses existing technology in a new way, he said.
“Different renditions of bubble curtains and barrier shields have been used elsewhere for the past 10 to 20 years,” he said. “The Poseidon tech that maintains the ecosystem within the separated growing space is new, and this is the first time it’s all been brought together.”
Photo courtesy of Mowi
