Recirculating Aquaculture Systems

The past decade has seen rapidly growing investment overseas in developing RAS systems (self-contained land-based fish farming) and land-based hybrid systems that pump salt water to and from the nearby ocean. Even hybrid systems are a significant improvement in that at least the fish spend all their lives onshore, not polluting shallow waterways and rivers.

All industrially farmed salmon in Tasmania spend part of their lives at sea, even if they started in an RAS hatchery.

The Tasmanian industry regularly denies that RAS is viable, citing instances of equipment and financial failures. But RAS, just like any new technology in any area, is subject to overly enthusiastic financial forecasts, trials that don't work well but point to better possibilities, overstocking through poor management, and occasional equipment failures. That's what experiments are all about. But the overwhelming number of new RAS projects, trial sites and emerging production operations, in so many countries, including all those involved in open net pen farming except Tasmania, is impossible to ignore.

There are operational or planned and funded RAS and onshore hybrid schemes in many parts of the world, the latest even in Switzerland. It is hard to keep up with so many reports. Here are some of them:

  • Saudi Arabia, where the Saudi kingdom plans a $750 million RAS facility to produce 600,000
  • tons of aquaculture including salmon a year by 2030 (2023 report)
  • Grimsby in the UK (2023 report)
  • Germany, with plans for a network of land-based farms producing fish, vegetables, insects,
  • algae and mushrooms, which are then sold directly across Germany (2023 report)
  • USA, where one of their many RAS facilities uses its waste as fertiliser for its associated farm
  • producing more than two million kilograms of salad greens a year (2023 report)
  • China, the first of many with full government backing (2024 report)
  • Sweden, with micro-factories set up close to their markets (2024 report)
  • Shetland Islands, exploring locations for sites in tunnels underground (2024 report)
  • Norway, a hybrid system in full production (2024 report)
  • Iceland (2024 report)
  • Japan, a rapidly expanding operation (2024 report)
  • Scotland (2024 report)
  • Dubai (2023 report)
  • Switzerland $190 million funding reached (2024 report)
  • Russia is investigating RAS to fill shortfalls caused by western sanctions (2024 report)

And Tasmania? Nothing.