USSEC recently brought Southeast Asian (SEA) ocean fish farmers to Turkey and Norway to observe model industrial aquaculture sectors and obtain critical information on industrial scale ocean cage farm and equipment design and operations.
USSEC SEA Technical Director – Aquaculture Lukas Manomaitis led the delegation of marine fish stakeholders to show them examples of a “practical” and “gold” standard for marine fish aquaculture.

A total of 10 SEA stakeholders, along with key USSEC staff, traveled to many locations in Turkey and Norway to get a better sense of how these two nations were able to move to an industrial mode of producing farmed marine fish.  Developments in industrial aquaculture in Turkey and Norway over the past decade have provided significant improvements in offshore fish farming with respect to cage frame and mooring systems, cage netting, at sea feeding systems, hatchery and juvenile production procedures, and specialized technical support.  These improvements make current surface cages suitable for the SEA region, where large storm events previously made surface cage systems impractical
Following site visits to offshore cage farms, ocean cage and equipment manufacturers, government research and policy management groups, fish processors and an investment support firm, USSEC team members indicated a strong need for the SEA industry to move to the industrial aquaculture model.  Team members felt that this transition would take place within the next five years.  Based on the success of the trip, it is recommended that additional team visits to Turkey and Norway be planned for 2016 and 2018 to help foster this transition.  Activities for future team visits should focus on site visits to working offshore cage farms and offshore cage farm equipment and specialized technical support firms in both Turkey and Norway.  The sectors in both Turkey and Norway have specialized technical support firms that can design and construct offshore cage farms globally and that can provide technical training in offshore farm operations and management to farm managers and staff in all regions that USSEC operates.
According to Dr. Michael Cremer, USSEC Senior International Aquaculture Program Advisor, fostering a movement to industrial offshore aquaculture should be the focus of USSEC’s ocean aquaculture program over the next five years

As part of the key performance indicators for this team travel, at least 25 percent of the group needed to agree to work with USSEC to hold a seminar to share their experiences.  A majority of the group indicated their interest in doing so.