FISH FARMING TECHNOLOGY by LandIng Aquaculture BV
LandIng Aquaculture BV is a Dutch Aquaculture engineering company. It was founded by Rob van de Ven from the University of Wageningen and Carlos Alberto Espinal from the University of Barcelona, Autonomous University of Barcelona and Polytechnic University of Catalunya. The company is based in the Netherlands and has worked in Europe, Latin America and Africa. We have talked to the two cofounders who happily shared with us the details of some of their latest projects and their thoughts on the future of aquacultural engineering helping the sector grow.
Complex engineering in aquaculture The aquaculture sector has experienced considerable growth over the few past decades. For a large part, that growth has been due to technological development in numerous areas related to the field. From biology and microbiology, to physics and chemistry and even genetics, the sector grows in complexity and technological advances. Consequently, this results in the market need for an engineering discipline applied to aquaculture and its specifics. “LandIng Aquaculture was created from a perceived need for sound aquacultural engineering services delivered in a similar fashion as other engineering disciplines,” states Rob Van de Ven, one of the two managing directors and cofounders. “No black boxes, no secrets and no confidential calculation methods. Instead, engineering services should be science-backed, technically justified and available for review by other professionals.” As an example of good practice, the company looks up to the architects and civil engineers who cannot have their projects approved without thorough audits and explanations of their methods and calculations. “With suppliers of turn-key systems promising one-size-fits-all solutions”, adds Carlos Espinal, “it is important to ask oneself: why would aquacultural engineering be any different from other engineering disciplines? The consequences of a failed project can be just as grave both for the investors and the environment.” Aquacultural engineering is often wrongly associated with only high-tech systems such as RAS. However, as the two engineers point out, engineering processes should be applied to virtually any type of aquaculture system: from a simple pond requiring an aeration system, to the latest, state-of-the-art, offshore cages. In all of these cases, only a thorough, knowledge-based approach can maximise the outputs and make the risks manageable. As an engineering company, LandIng Aquaculture can boast with design and engineering of systems of various sizes, ranging from small research labs to large-scale RAS farms planned to produce hundreds of tonnes of fish per year. The works of LandIng Aquaculture are thus not limited to commercial RAS, but also include biofloc systems, aquaponic systems and hatcheries.
The workflow
LandIng Aquaculture follows the typical development steps of an engineering project. Image 1: On the left Carlos Alberto Espinal Image 2: On the right On the right Rob van de Ven
34 | October 2017 - International Aquafeed