Donna Lanzetta thinks aquaculture has a golden future – if it successfully moves into the deep blue.

Lanzetta is the CEO of Manna Fish Farms, which plans to become the first aquaculture company to farm fish in federal waters on the East Coast of the United States. In 2018, The company plans to begin producing striped bass in floating aquapods eight miles off the coast of Long Island, New York. 

Speaking at the 2017 World Ocean Council’s Sustainable Oceans Summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Lanzetta said the future of offshore aquaculture is limitless.

“If I were to describe the next 15 years in one word, it would be ‘explosion,’” Lanzetta said.

She said Manna started with a type of Goldilocks-like search to find a location that wasn’t in the way of shipping, not too shallow, not too deep, not too warm or too cold. 

“Once you know ‘where,’ then we went into the ‘how,’” Lanzetta said. “At eight miles offshore, it’s not feasible to be there all the time. So we had to tap into robotics. We need to feed fish from shore to make this feasible.” 

She worked with the University of New Hampshire to customize an automated feed system. Manna acquired a buoy that holds 20 tons of feed and drops the feed into the cages below on a timed schedule. 

“It works from shore to feed fish,” Lanzetta said. “We can watch on it camera, but we need to do better. We need to determine how to increase battery storage. We’re looking to harness wave energy to store in the battery.”

Source: Seafood Source // Original Article