Environmental services for aquaculture

If left to chance alone, aquaculture ventures are destined to fail.  The world’s most successful operations (from offshore sea-pen to land-based pond systems) have three things in common:

1. they apply fit-for-purpose technology.
2. they produce profitable yields,
3. they maintain the environment’s integrity (both growing and receiving settings)

We model the behaviour of biological systems conditioned by physical, environmental, economic, and technical factors to plan aquaculture systems.  The sensitivity could include variations to feed costs, survival rates, workforce costs, energy costs and cost of capital.  The financial model output will provide the Internal Rate of Return (IRR), payback period, Net Present Value (NPV), utilisation ratios and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC).

The model will establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for the operations like optimal cycles, feed to conversion ratio, energy intensity and survival rates to ensure profitability during production.

A financial plan will lay the roadmap to manage your project development and production risks to ensure adequate returns.  The program will also provide insights into maximising resource utilisation and return on invested capital (ROIC) during the production phase.

We believe that a robust financial plan will provide confidence to you when deciding on the investment and will position the project favourably with the financing partners to attract more growth capital.

Quality evidence-based solutions

Our aquaculture carrying capacity modelling includes a fully integrated environmental model for calculating and demonstrating the effect of different production scenarios on the marine environment, including recovery times following fallowing.

Providing accurate decision-making information and more significant insights into the environmental footprint, risk assessment, improved productivity, and sustainability of aquaculture operations

We are an international leader in the development of bespoke modelling products.  In the aquaculture space, we have invested in developing industry-specific modelling packages for investigating the fate and transport of metabolic wastes, the carrying capacity of the marine environment. 

The models are fully customisable and tailored to suit the size of the project: from simple DEPOMOD like approaches to robust integrated strategies to determine the fate and integration of aquaculture wastes utilising modules such as:

• 3D hydrodynamics
• water quality
• particle transport
• biogeochemical modules.

The integrated model provides the means to predict the environmental footprint of aquaculture farms based on:

• local hydrodynamics
• nutrient mass-balance equations
• in-depth understanding of the relevant ecological cause-effect pathways
• sediment biogeochemical processes

The model is fully customisable and is equally adaptable in the ocean as it is in the prawn or tilapia pond.

We supply spatial modelling tools and services to inform decisions regarding aquaculture infrastructure and monitoring sites. Using local environmental, marine habitat, infrastructure, and other salient information, we apply our spatial modelling tools to provide suitable options for aquaculture development. 

Technology and tools

The clever application of modern technology, from telemetered loggers to AI-powered Decision Support Systems, revolutionises farm management. 

One of the elements driving this innovation is the application of ‘smart particles. Smart particles can be programmed to simulate dynamic entities from biochemically active detritus to juvenile turtles to the epidemiology of sea lice through life-history stages. 

In combination with our cutting-edge modelling tools and data management and visualisation software, the application of our smart particle technology is providing new insights into the risks posed by sea lice under different environmental, treatment and geographical scenarios.