ultimate ocean ranch, The

Sea Technology, Aug 1999 by Matsuda, Fujio, Szyper, James, Takahashi, Patrick, Vadus, Joseph R

Above, we projected 330 tons/year (3.3 x lOs grams) from 50 cubicmeters/second, giving a yield of 6.6 AYU. Groves6 estimated upwelling mariculture potential at 10 AYU, with one fewer transfer. Reducing this estimate by the efficiency factor of 0.2 gives 2 AYU. Given the uncertainties, this is an encouraging agreement with the 6.6 AYU derived above.

Bienfang8 began with observations of photosynthetic rates in deep-waterenriched experimental bottles, projected hourly rates times a photosynthetic rate of 10 hours/day, and considered two transfers. His estimated yield was 70 tons/year from 10 cubic-meters/day or 60 AYU. One additional transfer at an efficiency of 0.2 gives 12 AYU. In recent years, one would not project the photosynthetic rate by a factor as large as 10 hours/day. Daily light is approximated by multiplying mean hourly irradiance by about 0.6; therefore, Bienfang's 12 AYU yields 7.2 AYU, a very close agreement with this article's estimate, derived from a very different approach.

With these projections, a team of scientists and engineers from Japan and the United States has met to create the Resources of the Ocean International for the 21st Century, or R0I21, project. A follow-up meeting of this group will occur in the fall of 1999.

In parallel, the International Ocean Alliance Summit in December 1998: assessed the potential for the construction and operation of a floating platform in Hawaiian waters, - identified and ranked possible platform applications (e.g., energy generation, research base, industrial use, airports, public works, fisheries, recreation/entertainment) based on relevance to testing and operation in Hawaii, pointed out key technical issues requiring development, identified financing options and business partnerships, clarified regulatory and other permitting issues, formulated a development plan for Hawaii for submittal to the Hawaii Legislature and other potential funding sources, emphasizing commercial applications rather than research purposes, and established linkages between private and public entities.

Conclusions

Nutritional and demographic patterns all point to increasing demands that will only be met with a virtual Blue Revolution in marine systems development. The concept of the ultimate ocean ranch holds attractive promise. As new open-ocean pods of upwelling-supported fisheries are created, each will be self-supporting in terms of energy and feed, harvesting will be simplified through acoustic techniques, and environmental enhancement could well become an important added value, certainly through transfer of coastal mariculture enterprises away from populated areas, but also possibly contributing to remediation of global climate warming and through ocean cooling hurricane prevention. /sv

References

1. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Wide Web site:

www.fao.org, 1998.

2. Dunn, S., M. Dhanak, P. Takahashi, and M. Teng, "Artificial upwelling for environmental enhancement," Proceedings of the International OTEC/DOWA Association Conference, Singapore May 12-14, 1997.