Current viability of recirculation technology

摘要

While there is a generally held perception that fish production in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) is either non-competitive for food-fish, or reserved for high value species, there are numerous farms and hatcheries in North America using this technology. Over 10 million salmon smolts will be produced this year in North American recirculation systems, and the technology is being rapidly adopted by the salmon industry in Chile. Canadian farms are exploring large-scale land-based systems for smolt growout due to the increasingly negative public attitude towards intensive net-pen farming. Dramatic improvements in RAS technology have been made over the last 10 years, but continued improvement in cost efficiency is still required to make the production of food fish economically competitive with that in traditional large-scale outdoor systems.