Catenary Arrays: Pathways to Scale

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I think we're starting to hone in on systems that work.

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People can look at what we've done, they can use the methods

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that we've kind of come up with with confidence, you know,

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'cause we've made a lot of mistakes over, over the years.

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And so there's a reason kind of why, why these systems,

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why we developed 'em this way.

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And so people can, can save themselves a lot of trouble.

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So on this project we use this Cliff Gotti,

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designed catenary system.

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So it's almost, if you can imagine, sort of a bridge,

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it's got that nice little arch and

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because it has that arch,

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all the lines are under the same amount of tension.

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The overall canon area itself is, I mean, a great design.

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You know, it's not, it carries the weight evenly to anchors

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so you don't have to have as much anchors

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and you can use a ton of lines and every farm's different.

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Some people are gonna wanna run two

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and a half foot spacing like we are

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and some guys are gonna want to run 10 feet

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If you had like a normal sort of square system.

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And just try to put lines between that.

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They'd all have different tension levels,

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but that arch allows for that even tension.

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And so this allows us to have lines

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that are very closely spaced

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and so on normal farms, they have individual long lines and

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because those move sort of freely

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and aren't under as much tension,

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you have to space 'em out further.

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So on most farms, maybe they're like 25 feet is the closest,

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maybe they're usually like 50 feet.

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But here we can have lines that are two

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and a half feet apart.

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So we're really optimizing that growing area,

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The simple adoption of a cabinetry system

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that could make much better use

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or efficient use of that space.

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And as we've shown, even with two

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and a half foot spacing between the lines,

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we've not seen a depression in the growth rate.

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Whether that's the optimum

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or the best spacing, I'm not ready to advocate that

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for every farm site

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because every farm site's gonna be a little bit different.

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But growers could begin to experiment with

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what is the optimum spacing for their sites.

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And we can produce a lot more seaweed in a smaller area,

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which is, you know, it has benefits in terms

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of the aesthetics, in terms of paying for lease areas.

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You need a smaller lease area, but you can grow more kelp.