Aquaculture

Marine aquaculture pens have to be regularly checked for holes, plus the fish need to be inspected for parasites. And although the job is typically performed by human divers, it turns out that a robotic sea turtle may be a better choice for the task.

It's vitally important to monitor the water quality of fish farms, as problems such as pollution can quickly prove disastrous. A small new floating cube was designed with this in mind, as it continuously tracks multiple factors.

​Killing up to 200,000 people annually, schistosomiasis is one of THE most deadly parasitic diseases in the world, second only to malaria. Soon, however, prawn aquaculture could be used to control the snails that spread it – and to provide revenue for people in developing nations.

​Sea lice infestations are a common problem in salmon farms, and while there are chemical-free ways of getting the parasites off the fish, they're kind of rough. A new device is being put through one such delousing process, in order to measure just how hard it is on the salmon.

​Among the criticisms of salmon farms are the facts that non-native fish can escape into the local marine environment, plus the farmed fish may become infected with parasites that spread to wild populations. A new type of salmon pen, however, is designed to address those problems.

​Although salmon are known to be a good source of healthy omega-3 fatty acids, farmed fish typically contain much less of them than their wild counterparts. Norwegian scientists are working on a solution to that problem, in the form of fish feed made from a genetically-engineered plant.

​Even though tilapia may be raised on farms, the food that they eat still contains ecologically-important fish that are caught in the ocean, depleting wild stocks. That's why Dartmouth College scientists are now looking at replacing the fishmeal in that food with existing algae meal.

​One of the world's most commonly farmed fish, tilapia are typically raised in square pens and get fed by hand a few times a day. New Brazilian technology that does away with those factors, however, is claimed to reduce both expenses AND fish mortality rates.

In 2015, a startup called Aqua Design Innovations launched a low-maintenance home aquaponics system that relied on the natural filters to keep its waters clear. The company raised a lot of cash in the process, and is now building on that success with a bigger system that accommodates more plants.

A study from UCLA suggests that if fish farming can be moved offshore, then an area of sea the size of Lake Michigan (0.025 percent of the ocean's surface), could meet the global demand for fish and allow wild stock to recover.

​​It's one of the great ironies of aquaculture – although the fish come from farms, the food that they eat contains wild-caught fish. A few years ago, however, a study showed that prawns could be fed microbes instead of fish byproducts. Now, another study has concluded the same thing about tilapia.

Following what it describes as an "exhaustive and rigorous scientific review," the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has today announced the approval of the first ever genetically-modified animal for human consumption.