INCREASES OXYGEN: '
The Norwegian company Oxysolution AS has developed a patented method that increases the oxygen content in water. A full scale test of Oxysolution technology will take place in a fish farming project with the Norwegian Food Research Institute (Nofima), starting early next year.
Oxysolution's patented technology makes it possible to increase the level of dissolved oxygen in water. Tests have indicated stable levels in excess of 90 mg/l, or approximately 10-12 times higher than previously thought possible. This technological platform for super-oxygenation of water is the point of origin for all future products from OxySolution. It’s also a very important factor in future fish farming.
Oxysolution is one of many companies developing new technologies that can be used to innovate and streamline marine food production. Agricultural food production is by far the largest source of food supply, but the annual increase rate is on decline due to increased restrictions on land and water resources, and vulnerability to weather and climate change. At the same time, by 2025 the world needs 30 percent extra foods.
By 2050, the world`s food production must feed a total of 9 billion people. Although global fish production and consumption has tripled the last four decades (approx. 50 mill tons by 1973 and 150 tons currently, half of which is attributable to the fastest growing marine part: aqua and mare culture), the scale of marine supplies is still modest compared to the agroindustry, accounting for 7,5 bill tons (of which at least 20 % is edible and 6,5 and 1 billion tonnes, respectively is derived from cereals and livestock products, respectively). “The blue sector has to increase manifold if it is going to become the main substitute to the declining growth rate of livestock products when facing population growth of 1,5 % annually and corresponding increase in annual meat consumption of 7%,” says Øystein Lie, Prof. PhD and executive manager at MareLife.
In addition to the pure need of more protein, food scares (e.g. BSE etc) and life style health issues have been fueling increased consumption of seafood products, being both whole fish as well as refines products like omega 3 or other PUFA, antioxidants etc.
Although current aquaculture displays a comparable low carbon foot print, the future manifold sized aquaculture has to adapt to future considerably increased demands for cost efficacy, competitiveness and lowest possible carbon foot print.
“This is crucially dependent on how smart we are able to run and develop aqua- and mare culture throughout the entire value chain,” says Lie.
According to Lie fisheries can be upscaled if the mangement regimes are optimized and exploit more trophic levels (krill, calanus etc) than just bony fish (ocean annual net biomass production is at least 100 bill tonnes) and aquaculture can be escalated manifold if we solve feed resource bottle necks and manage to control diseases in an adequate way.
CLOSE TO BREAKTHROUGH:
Oxysolution is about to test its technology in fish farming, with the aim of commercial application. But it is probably the use of the super-oxygenated water in life science that is closest to a commercial breakthrough. It includes, among other things, research on cells, cultivation of bacteria and the development of vaccines.
– We have completed the research in this area and we are in discussions with suppliers of cell media, says CEO Jan Økern in Oxysolution. Besides fish farming, Økern points to functional beverage and cosmetics as two other important areas for the use of Oxysolution`s super-oxygenated water.In the fish farming industry, the oxygenation of water is a very important feature. In closed recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), such as hatcheries, fry production and well boats, which wash and transport fish, the oxygenation is done by bubbling oxygen into the water.
This has several disadvantages. Much of the oxygen disappears out of the water again, the fish utilize very little of what is actually delivered and it is also difficult to maintain a constant oxygen concentration in the facility. The oxygenation process requires much energy, and the bubbles can stress the fish.
Oxysolution’s solution is to mix its super-oxygenated water with the water, which circulates in RAS facilities, and thus create a stable, optimized oxygen level in the water. By mixing liquid in liquid, a steady oxygen concentration is created, which is very important.
– The fishing industry is concerned with dissolved oxygen level. For Atlantic salmon, it is generally agreed that the optimum level is around 110-120 percent. This corresponds to approximately 9.5 -10 milligrams of oxygen per liter, whereas the levels in normal water is about 6-7 milligrams. Our solution can provide this level, stable over time and more cost-effectively, says Økern.
OxySolution point out that their technology will result in lower costs for the fish farmers, through reduced energy consumption and reduced use of oxygen.
– We also believe that our solution will provide less stress on the fish, and thus increased welfare, less disease, lower mortality and better growth, says Økern. This will result in increased revenue.
Low oxygen levels can lead to reduced feeding. With evenly distributed and high oxygen levels, we believe we can increase the feeding effectiveness significantly, says Økern.
OxySolution has presented its technology for the major players in the aquaculture industry and received good feedback. During the first quarter of next year OxySolution starts a project with Nofima at Sunndalsøra, where full-scale testing of OxySolution’s technology will be implemented in a smolt production facility.
– We've done these tests on a smaller scale, and it has worked very well. Now, the full scale, and it is of course exciting. The project will last three years with several milestones, but we assume that we after six months already will have several important answers, says Økern.
Yngve Attramadal is a senior engineer at SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture and is familiar with OxySolution technology.“I have discussed the possibility with OxySolution on how we can work on this in the future. It is an exciting product for the marine sector,” says Attramadal.
Attramadal work a lot with demersal fish, which pose major challenges for farming.
-” The fish are close to the bottom, where the oxygen levels are lower and it is difficult to distribute oxygen evenly. I believe that use OxySolutions technology can be very interesting in this context,” he says.
“We believe our technology can enable farming of other species such as demersal fish on great commercial basis. Price of Turbot is now seven times higher than salmon,” says Økern.
SALMON CONVERTING OMEGA-3:
Another Nofima-project shows how salmon can play a key role in increasing the amount of the healthy omega-3 fatty acids by converting short fatty acids from plants to the long, marine omega-3 fatty acids .
“It is the salmon’s genes that determine how well it can convert the fatty acids, and we can use this knowledge to breed salmon that can produce more omega-3,” says Nofima Senior Scientist Gerd Marit Berge.
She is currently managing a Research Council of Norway project that is studying how genetic background and different feed influence the salmon’s ability to convert short to long omega-3 fatty acids. This is an interdisciplinary project involving several scientists in both breeding and nutrition.
“The fact that we can see differences in genes of salmon that are good and less good at converting fatty acids is a good indication that the ability to produce long omega-3 is hereditary,” says Berge.
Some salmon are much better at producing this healthy fat than others because their genes are more active and produce enzymes that convert the short omega-3 fatty acids found in plant oils to long omega-3 that we can otherwise only get from marine organisms.
There is limited access to fish oil that may be used in feed so increasingly more plant oil is being used in salmon feed. Fish oil is by far the best source of omega-3. Less fish oil in the feed means that the salmon fillet contains less omega-3 than previously.
“Concentrating on salmon that are good at converting short omega-3 fatty acids to long ones will make the fish healthier and contribute to better utilization of the limited omega-3 resources,” says one of the other scientists in the project, Nofima Senior Scientist Bente Ruyter.
The reason the salmon has an inherent ability to produce long omega-3 is not to give us healthy food. In all likelihood it is a characteristic the salmon has because it lives in fresh water for the first stage of its life, and in fresh water the salmon has to produce its own as it does not have access to long omega-3 fatty acids. The fatty acids are mostly found in marine organisms. In the marine environment the salmon has rich access to these fatty acids and as such does not need to do as much of this conversion itself.
In order to find out how good the genes are at starting production of the enzymes that are necessary to convert the short omega-3 to the long omega-3 fatty acids, Nofima’s scientists have tested hundreds of salmon families from the breeding company SalmoBreed. A salmon family comprises the siblings which are the offspring of a specific male salmon and female salmon.
The scientists found large differences between the best and worst salmon families. Finding such differences forms the basis for commencing a breeding programme. In breeding, scientists systematically select the families which are best for the characteristic they wish to improve.
“We have now come so far in the project that both the salmon that were worst at converting omega-3 and those that were best have got offspring. We will now test the siblings further to see if their ability to produce more omega-3 is passed down to the next generation,” says Nofima Senior Scientist Anna Sonesson.
EAGER TO TEST:
SalmoBreed’s Manager of Genetics and R&D, Håvard Bakke, believes it is still too early to determine whether the ability to convert omega-3 shall be a breeding goal for their salmon breeding programme. He is uncertain whether it will make any difference in practice if breeding companies include the omega-3 syntheses as a goal in the salmon breeding programmes.
“We are now eager to test the offspring of the fish we have tested. When we know their ability to produce omega-3, we will know how much we can achieve through breeding. If we can achieve something of significance through breeding we will do it because marine oils are a bottleneck,” says Bakke.
If the breeding companies find that it is appropriate and start to breed for this characteristic in salmon in a determined manner, the salmon feed can contain less omega-3 without the content in the salmon fillet being reduced, precisely because this bred salmon has the best conversion capacity. Such an optimisation of the resources in the feed will be more sustainable and have economic benefits.