Aquapods – Sustainable Aquaculture

 

Hey Foodies! Another video to show alternate sustainable aquaculture. From the previous aquaculture blog post, we looked at the impacts of aquaculture and the types of pollution that it brings about. This video focuses heavily on marine aquaculture and how deep sea aquaculture seeks to reduce the impact on fish and food wastes in aquaculture. 

 

What are Aquapods?

Aquapods are huge fish pens left out in the ocean, which allows the farming of fish in their natural habitation (Solon, 2011). As such, aquapods eliminates the need for large scale fish feeding, as fish are able to feed on natural zooplankton and smaller fishes that are available widely in the ocean. Furthermore, Aquapods consist of a large pen in which fishes do not encounter overcrowdedness and are able to grow under a stress-free environment.

 

The materials in which aquapods are made are brass mesh, which eliminates the need for cleaning, and does not rust. As such, reducing the environmental impact that aquaculture brings about. Furthermore, research has shown that these aquapods often do not have environmental impacts when fish rearing, especially in the fields of water quality or seafloor destruction (Solon,2011).

 

Aquapods Location

The key difference between traditional aquaculture pens in the ocean and the aquapods is the water depth these pens are located in. Traditional aquaculture pens are located in shallow water, usually near the bay areas while Aquapods are located in deeper waters offshore. As such, the majority of waste products generated by aquaculture is more likely to be swept away and distributed as nutrients across the ocean via ocean currents. Hence, it is less likely that waste products will accumulate in these areas to cause a problem.  

 

Significance of Pollution

With the improvements in the technology of aquapods, many forms of pollution that traditional aquaculture brings about is mitigated. As nutrients are the main source of pollutants in most aquaculture pens, Aquapods serve to reduce these nutrients output and allow fishes to thrive in their natural environment, feeding off natural prey rather than artificial feed. As such, it reduces the bio footprint of each fish, especially when coastal fisheries requires the overfishing of smaller fishes to feed their aquaculture pens. Therefore, Aquapods seeks to reduce the nutrient imbalance in aquaculture, relying on the earth’s natural processes of ocean currents and a more natural approach to growing fishes.

 

Conclusion:

Aquapods provides an alternative to traditional fishing pens. This is especially important with the rise of demand for seafood, it is important to improve our current technology and adopt new strategies to reduce the impacts of pollution on our environment. Furthermore, aquapods provides a form of “free-range fishes” to consumers, removing the potential health hazards that might come about from traditional aquaculture. Hence, I believe that Aquapods provides us with a vision of what might come in the future.

That’s it for today foodies, see you guys in a future post!

 

Food Detective Out,

Wen Hong

 

References

Kelly, D. (n.d.). Free-range fish farming. Atlas of the Future. https://atlasofthefuture.org/project/aquapod-fish-farm/

Solon, O. (2011, September 19). Aquapod is a floating, sustainable fish farm. WIRED UK. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/aquapod-sustainable-fish-farm

World Economic Forum. (2019, October 4). This innovative fish farm could revolutionise seafood production | Pioneers for Our Planet [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsDfI1aObLc&ab_channel=WorldEconomicForum