How can technology help your kelp farm?
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Hi all, I'm Antonella. I'm not an ocean farmer, but a marine robotics engineer interested in finding ways to help kelp farmers improve and scale their processes with underwater robots or other technology.
I don't know much about kelp farming other than what I've learned here in the Greenwave courses, and I'd love the opportunity to chat with some kelp farmers about potential opportunities for robots on their farms, from ROVs to autonomous vehicles.
I know your time is valuable and I don't want to take too much of it, but if you're willing to chat with me for 30 minutes or so, either over Zoom or over coffee, I'd be very grateful! Please shoot me an email on my profile if you'd like to chat. I'm based in the Los Angeles area.
Thanks everyone!
@antonella_wilby hello there
Are you into kelp farming only? We are newbies on seaweed farming specifically Kappaphycus Alvarezii variety that are growing here in our country the Philippines. celadalilibeth01@gmail.com is my email address. Feel free to contact us anytime if you want to consider including us in your endeavor. Good luck .
@lilibeth_celada Hi! Thanks for your reply! I'm interested in any and all types of algae, not just kelp. I will send you an email and hopefully we can chat more!
@antonella_wilby Hi Antonella, thanks for posting! If you haven't stumbled upon it yet, you might check out the work of Kelson Marine and Toby Dewhurst in Maine, who have done some experimental projects with kelp and ROVs.
@lindsay_olsen Thank you for this tip! I will look into their work!
I think I read in your bio that you also work with oyster aquaculture? Any chance you'd be open to chatting briefly about the differences & similarities between shellfish farming and kelp farming and possible tech applications?
@lilibeth_celada Hi! Thanks for your reply! I'm interested in any and all types of algae, not just kelp. I will send you an email and hopefully we can chat more!
@lindsay_olsen Thank you for this tip! I will look into their work!
I think I read in your bio that you also work with oyster aquaculture? Any chance you'd be open to chatting briefly about the differences & similarities between shellfish farming and kelp farming and possible tech applications?
@antonella_wilby There’s a huge need for such technologies related to planting, harvest, and farm maintenance. Planting methods depend on species and with kelp either seed string or direct seeding of sporophytes seems to be working well. However, it would be nice to have those methods performed underwater to avoid the dependence on weather. Also, there can be instances where the seed string fails to intimately align with the growline and holdfast transfer is delayed of does not happen. There is also the pesky matter of removing last season’s seed string.
For species that are farmed through vegetative propagation there is the very labor-intensive process of attaching propagules to the growline. A mechanized solution to that is essential if such farming is to happen is higher-wage countries.
Today, harvest is normally done by hauling growlines out of the water and cutting or stripping the crop off the line. I’d guess 90% of that cutting is done manually by wielding a knife. It may be better to harvest with the lines left at their normal depth and cutting and collecting done underwater. This would allow the farm to maintain it’s proper pretension that minimized growline sag and reduce crop losses associated with hauling lines out of the water.
Farm maintenance involves cleaning and inspecting those portions of the farm that are normally left in the water. Anchor lines and structural lines get heavy with marine growth which both increases the static and dynamic loads on the farm and also prevents proper inspection. We need some clever little crawling devices that remove soft and hard biofouling from these lines and allows concurrent or subsequent inspection for chafe, etc. The devices would need to be clever enough to negotiate splices, intersections, and any mounted sensors.
I’d be happy to chat with you further if you are interested in pursuing any of these ideas.
Cliff