Ocean Arc - offshore concept
Ocean Ark concept drawing
Given my last rant about existing approaches to offshore and land-based salmon production and how they would only serve to perpetuate existing barriers to entry and high-cost production systems, a friend sent me a link to a proposed offshore project, Ocean Arc. Here is a video describing the vessel and their production plans.
A few details I was able to glean from their website and a couple of articles:
1) It would be self-powered by three diesel engines and able to travel up to 4 knots per hour
2) Suitable for any marine species
3) Capacity for a crew of six, operating autonomously for up to 25 days
4) 200,000 cubic meters of rearing volume and a production of 3,900 metric tons – suggesting a peak production density of 19.5 kg per cubic meter
5) I didn’t see any mention of the construction cost
6) They are projecting below 5% mortality during production
What I like:
Nearshore permits - It’s an interesting concept and does offer a potential solution to some aspects of the barriers to entry in the salmon farming industry – namely, it eliminates the need for nearshore net pen leases and does offer an opportunity to get away from water quality challenges found in a typical net pen site (localized plankton blooms, potentially sea lice, seals and sea lion pressure etc) – depending on how large an area is impacted, I guess. (The hypoxic zone in the North Pacific can be hundreds of kilometers long at certain times of the year and I’m not certain a vessel traveling at 4 knots/hour could avoid these waters entirely)
Scalability - Assuming the technology, logistics and economics work out, it is certainly scalable. While still limited to territorial waters, there is an abundance of space to work in. Salmon farms already occupy a vanishingly small percentage of nearshore coastal waters (but an astonishingly large share in the fevered imaginations of opponents), but a farm, like this one, would largely be out of sight of 99% of humanity. Unfortunately, few countries have put any work into developing offshore permitting systems and whoever is first across the line with this concept would have to be the brave souls trying to permit an operation most regulators had never dreamed of.
What concerns me:
Navigation - If you have ever had the experience of towing a cage full of fish, you’ll know that you age in dog years while it is happening. Towing a 200,000 cubic meter box, with a depth of 66 feet will expose the vessel to enormous drag forces and potentially significant shear forces at different depths. The gulf stream in the Atlantic can travel at speeds up to 6 knots per hour and a vessel only capable of moving at 4 knots per hour will be at its mercy. They mention that the vessel can also be towed but there is only so much force that you can put on a net pen structure before the nets collapse and the rearing volume is impacted. Admittedly, this vessel is custom designed for towing, so maybe I am just having a PTSD episode.
Too slow to avoid ocean conditions - The vessel would be at the mercy of whatever the ocean throws at you. As mentioned above, plankton blooms and areas of low-dissolved oxygen can cover vast amounts of territory that a slow-moving vessel can’t avoid. Their website mentions an ability to withstand waves of up to 7 meters, that’s 34% of the total rearing depth under some conditions and how does the vessel handle if it is unable to avoid larger waves? The forces on the nets and on the fish would be incredible. Most current approaches to offshore cage structures are designed to provide rearing space below 20 meters to avoid interaction with the surface layer. (Here is an example)
Constant relative motion - If I am thinking about this concept correctly, it will need to be in constant motion relative to the external body of water it is in. With significant biomass consuming oxygen, it can’t just drift with the current, it will need to have flow through the nets to exchange water and oxygen in the pen. If it needs to be in constant relative motion, it will be constantly consuming fuel and, I think, the horsepower required to move a structure like this will imply a lot of fuel and expensive fish.
Design/cost/risk - I was about to say that the risks of the Ocean Ark becoming a stranded asset are enormous but, I guess, if it didn’t live up to its billing as a farming vessel, it could become an extremely expensive and overbuilt nearshore net pen system. As mentioned above, they don’t list construction costs but consider copper alloy nets, custom design and construction etc. I would be very surprised if it was anything less than $80m – 90m US.
Limited range - The ability to operate autonomously for up to 25 days will limit operations to relatively near-shore locations. Assuming an average speed of 1 – 2 knots per hour, it will have a maximum range of 50 – 60 miles from shore before it needs to turn back. It might be able to extend this range if service vessels are able to travel offshore to meet it, but only if sea conditions were mild enough to permit ship-to-ship cargo transfer. That’s a big “if” in offshore conditions. This range will limit some, but not all, user-conflicts and will make for tricky navigation as, outside of shipping lanes, many coastal areas are poorly mapped and submerged hazards above 20m in depth may be a concern.
Logistical challenges - Unless empty, coming to port would almost never be an option for this vessel, for two main reasons: 1) many port entrances are shallow, typically they are dredged to allow access for deep draft vessels but 20 meters is on the extreme end and 2) even if they were able to lift the nets to a more manageable depth, water quality in most harbours is not suitable for cultivation of food fish. They are often polluted, impacted by river flows, dredging activities etc.
Why I think it falls short of being an industry disruptor.
The infrastructure required to support an operation of this type does not exist in most regions. Feed delivery, mortality removal, harvest, crew transport and other services vessels will need to be suited for operations in open-ocean sea states. Perhaps the costs of these vessels become manageable as production volumes increase with more of these vessels in operation, but it does imply a high-cost operating model.
If you recall from a previous blog post, a key feature of disruptive technology is that is democratizes and lowers the barriers to entry for more people to use the technology. I don’t think this technology meets those criteria at all. It changes the permitting structure but I don’t think those changes imply a lower cost of entry. Quite the opposite.
It’s easy to crap on someone else’s plan while its very hard work to get this kind of idea off the ground. I don’t want this blog to turn into some version of me sitting on my front porch yelling at the neighborhood children, so I’ll work hard to find a more positive and optimistic article for next week.
If you’re still with me, thanks for reading. As always, comments and feedback can be directed to info@alanwcook.com or via my LinkedIn profile. Cheers.