24 JUNE 2016 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG long period. Over these years, we’ve faced an extraordinary array of challenges. Many of these took us by surprise, were difficult to work through and required considerable dedication, time, effort and capital to address. I offer this review so that potential producers can do their homework and make an informed appraisal to determine whether RAS are a good fit. A Brief History of Recirculating Aquaculture Although aquaculture in ponds and natural enclosures has been practiced for centuries, intensive aquaculture has a much shorter history. Modern recirculating aquaculture has its roots in the 1970s in a German program that demonstrated that carp could grow under very intensive conditions, provided fish had access to a continuous supply of high-quality water. Subsequently, the Danish Aquaculture Institute undertook a pioneering effort to develop many of the technical foundations of the field. Their efforts supported the development of one of first commercial industries to use RAS for production of European eel Anguilla anguilla as food. This sector benefits from an extremely robust animal, which commands a very high market price, and stable demand based on traditional northern European consumption patterns. The success of the European eel industry inspired efforts in the US that sought to develop water saving and environmentally sustainable alternatives to conventional flow-through and pond-based aquaculture. Notable early research programs were conducted by the New Alchemy Institute, which developed the simple yet elegant “solar algae pond,” the Rodale Institute, which developed a low-cost tank-based system for “backyard aquaculturists,” and my work at Hampshire College, where I was fortunate to receive support from the Pew Foundation. Engineers and scientists at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as a number of public research institutions played critical roles in building on these foundations. Notably, aquaculturists and engineers at Virginia Tech, LSU, Cornell and the Freshwater Institute, among others, made highly significant contributions, developing what has grown into a sophisticated As aquaculture becomes an increasingly important part of the food system, the idea of raising fish on land using recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) has come to hold considerable interest for many people. Some people possess an admirable desire to contribute to society by raising food in a sustainable manner; others seek ways to breathe new life into underutilized farm assets, while others see an exciting business opportunity in a rapidly expanding “industry of the future.” Whatever their motivations, people seek our advice on an almost weekly basis as they contemplate growing fish for profit. Given this interest, and the magnitude of the commitment required to enter the business, I thought it would be helpful to share some observations in an effort to identify the primary drivers of success, while highlighting the factors that have caused the vast majority of commercial RAS projects in the US to fail. I share this information to help the RAS community gain a more complete understanding of the skills required to mitigate the operational risks associated with commercial recirculating aquaculture. A Little Background As the founder of Australis, I have been raising fish in RAS for more than 30 years. In the early 1980s, I led one of the first research programs focused on developing a scientific understanding of RAS and, together with my team, assembled and refined many of the processes and the basic treatment sequence that is utilized in RAS systems globally. Given our early start and the lack of integrators at that time, we designed, built and operated our own systems, which, while painful in many respects, led to the steady accumulation of critical experience and greatly reduced capital requirements relative to known commercially available systems. Over time, as the primary engineering and environmental requirements began to be worked out, we produced and evaluated more than 30 species of freshwater, diadromous and marine fish. Australis is one of a very small number of North American RAS operators that has sustained a profitable RAS business for a So, You Want to Be a Fish Farmer? Josh Goldman The author at the Australis Aquaculture facility. Grow-out tanks (500 t) at Australis Aquaculture’s recirculating aquaculture production facility.
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