Job Prospects in Aquaculture Engineering

[seaweedman]

Hey folks,

First post here. I am very interested in aquaculture, and especially in offshore aquaculture. I could be wrong, as I am just getting into the field, but from what I can tell, the future is offshore, which would seem to indicate a lot of potential for ocean engineering jobs. How many here work in the aquaculture field, and do you think that my assessment is accurate? How likely do you think it is for an explosion of offshore aquaculture in the near future, given the regulatory and overall economic climate in the US? Just trying to feel the field out to figure out my niche in the aquaculture world, and how I can most practically make my dreams of becoming a seaweed bioenergy tycoon a reality. I know that the Marine Biologist field is way over saturated, so I'm trying to figure something out that is related but would make me stand out from the crowd and help my job prospects overall. Although I plan on starting my own aquaculture business eventually, so employability is less of a concern than in depth knowledge of offshore cultivation system design. So any thoughts or recommendations here?

Thanks in advance.

 

[MikeHalloran]

seaweed bioenergy

Never heard of it.

You're going to grow seaweed, harvest it, and burn it to produce electricity?

You'll need a lot of land area, or barge area, or machinery, to get the water out of the weed.
... in addition to acquiring and maintaining rights to use the littoral area.
... and compensate the shoreline landowners for spoiling their view, to the extent their lawyers think you do.

Job Prospects?
You'll be the first.






Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[EdStainless]

The biggest potential is to turn the seaweed into something more valuable than electricity, like specialty chemicals.
A lot of waste-to-energy people are looking into these sorts of projects today.
Power generated from nat gas is just too cheap.

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P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube

 

[IRstuff]

"seaweed bioenergy"

Seems like an odd juxtaposition:
> seaweed ostensibly has an extremely high water content, which means drying it is challenging, but moreover, it means that transportation efficiency is low, i.e., you're raising stuff out of the water and carrying it somewhere, only to evaporate off 80% (or whatever) of the mass you used energy to move. Kind of like drilling for oil and then throwing 80% of it away.
> many varieties of seaweed are used as food; turning it into a fuel runs the risk of upsetting established markets and market prices. A similar thing has occurred with corn-based ethanol, where the demand for corn has mucked with feed prices and the price of the livestock that live on the feed.


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[gerhardl]

Seaweedman:

I will recommend you to search world-wide and also evaluate education and work outside US to gain experience.

Perhaps starting by searching out companies that produce and deliver technology to the fish-farming industry, and some of the worldwide salmon and seaweed protein producers.

In Europe Norway is leading in technology and production, and will probably have studies in English language. Other countries might be Scotland, Canada, Chile and some of the Asian countries.

This is a technological and biological area with large potential and fast technological and biological development where the US is (still) not in the front.

Re climate: There are several technical projects trying to get 'offshore' projects (fishfarming in different aspects) 'inland' in climate controlled tanks. No vast commercial succeed yet.

Good luck!