A consortium of Chinese partners including Wuchuan Shipbuilding Industry Group, a subsidiary of one of the largest state-owned shipbuilding companies in the country; Hainan Ocean Development; Beida Jade Bird, a company launched by Beijing University; Lingao Haifeng, a fish farming company; and the Bank of China have agreed to invest US$955 million to build three mega offshore fish farms in the South China Sea.
The project, which has been referred to as a “modern deep-sea intelligent oceans and fisheries project” in a report by the Chinese government, will include three platforms, each 120 meters in diameter at the ocean surface and 75 meters deep. Each will have a volume of 250,000 cubic meters of water, and will be able to produce up to 6,000 tons of fish.
A Year After Ocean Farm 1
The announcement of this ambitious project follow little less than a year after the completion of Ocean Farm 1, the first deep-sea fish farm built off the coast of China’s Shandong Province, before being delivered to Norway.
Built by Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group, the fully automated, semi-submerged Ocean Farm 1 was described by SalMar, thee Norwegian aquaculture company that commission the project as “a full-scale pilot facility for testing, learning, research and development. It will be equipped for R&D activities, with particular focus on biological conditions and fish welfare. Aiming to reduce environmental footprints, improve fish welfare and answer acreage challenges.”
Not quite as large as the latest fish farming operation announced by China, and also not fully submersible, Ocean Farm 1 is 110 meters in diameter and 70 meters deep, with a volume capacity of 250,000 cubic meters of water. It includes 20,000 sensors to monitor and feed the fish stock, and can produce 8,000 tons of fish in 14 months.
Moves in Mariculture
Driven by macro-trends that include population growth, shifting wealth distribution, and changing dietary demands toward more protein content, investing in aquaculture in emerging markets is becoming a topic earmarked for investors discussion.
“Since 1960, global demand for seafood has increased 3.2 percent annually, outpacing the 1 percent annual growth in the world’s population over the same time period,” noted Philippe de Lapérouse, managing director of HighQuest Group in the piece Technology Plays in Aquaculture published in the GAI Gazette.
Rising global populations and increasing wealth – particularly in emerging economies – along with diminishing wild fish numbers have put pressure on the aquaculture industry to fill the gap in supply.
Predictive modeling by The World Bank estimates that 2030, 62 percent of food fish will be provided through aquaculture, and from 2030 onward, aquaculture will dominate supply in the industry, according to the report, Fish to 2030, Prospects for Fisheries and Aquaculture.
These trends have resulted in heightened interest in all forms of mariculture and aquaculture by China. In November of last year, China’s Ministry of Agriculture released a “national mariculture demonstration zone construction plan (2017-2025) calling for 178 pilot fish farms within that time frame, reports Undercurrent News.
Last year also saw another Chinese consortium based in Fujian including De Maas SMC, a company in Qingdao launched by two Dutch partners serving the offshore oil and gas industries, agree to build a fish farm consisting of five semi-submersible fish pens 139 meters in diameter and 12 meters deep.
The growing role of aquaculture in feeding an expanding global population has also drawn the attention of investors in Silicon Valley, reports Quartz. Albeit the focus is generally skewed toward technological applications that can advance the industry. Two of the largest investments to date this year have been a $3.5 million round raised by Aquabyte, a startup using computer vision and machine learning to optimize the efficiencies in fish farming, and a $10 million round raised by XpertSea, a Canadian company that employs AI and computer vision to track and manage early-stage aquatic populations such as shrimp larvae and live feed.
-Lynda Kiernan