Open water aquaculture (offshore aquaculture)

Aquaculture is increasing and expanding into deeper offshore environments in answer to growing consumer demand for seafood, improved technology, and limited potential to increase wild fisheries catches. Aquaculture is the fastest-growing animal food-producing sector on the planet and has played an important role in filling the gap between seafood supply and demand.

Offshore aquaculture offers significant potential for increasing world food production

in an environmentally sustainable way. Offshore aquaculture in general has been defined using a variety of criteria, including water depth, farming farther off the coast, wind and wave exposure, and jurisdictional boundaries.

According to FAO, development of offshore mariculture can be justified on the basis of the need to provide food security in the face of the projected increase of world population. Seeing the oceans as contributive factor to future food security is in line with the conviction that the potential of the world’s oceans to supplement the food supply is vastly underutilized.

Farming in fully exposed offshore waters requires a completely new engineering technology approach since equipment and systems currently used for fish and shellfish production in protected nearshore waters are largely unsuitable for the open ocean.
Open water aquaculture (offshore aquaculture)