Open ocean aquaculture engineering

The University of New Hampshire, Center for Ocean Engineering (UNH/COE) open ocean aquaculture engineering efforts continue to be focused on developing engineering design and analysis tools for assessing, evaluating and optimizing engineering systems required for successful open ocean aquaculture. The methodology presented here was used to develop the mooring/cage system for the successful deployment of two Ocean Spar Sea Station cages in 1999 in the exposed Gulf of Maine environment. These cages are still deployed, and have survived three Gulf of Maine winters, including one storm in March 2001 where seas reached 13 meters (8.25 m significant wave height). The unique contribution of this effort is the integration of the analysis, physical and numerical modeling, and monitoring techniques developed during this program. This provides a benchmark approach for enhancing and clearly understanding the dynamics of the cage mooring system. The techniques were subsequently used for preliminary evaluation of the REFA and Sadco Shelf cage systems as potential candidates for open ocean aquaculture. An overview of the methods used and selected results to date are presented.