Research tools for net deformation and distribution of fish in commercial scale aquaculture research facilities

AquaCulture Engineering (ACE) is a company that is in the process of establishing test facilities for aquaculture technology based on a license to farm 2 340 tons of salmon for R&D purposes. The test facility will offer large-scale infrastructure, includi ng plants, sites and personnel, for research, development and testing of technology and equipment. In order to fully be able to test the performance of the equipment and structures, it is important to have tools that quantitatively are able to measure cri tical features of the structural and operational performance. In this proposal, we seek to develop such research tools, and have focused on two aspects of performance and behaviour with respect to designing aquaculture structures that are escape safe - n et measurements (deformation and stress) and fish distribution measurements in full-scale. In full-scale it is today impossible to conduct measurements of these aspects with the necessary accuracy, yet it is important to understand these features in the d esign-process in order to construct structures that are safe. In addition to measure net behaviour and fish distribution it is also necessary to develop protocols for these full-scale measurements, especially regarding how the environmental (sea loads) ar e registered, and how the whole testing procedure is designed (length of time series, number of measurements points, resolution, etc.). The tools will be designed to be used on industry size cages (up to at least 160m in circumference), which will be the default cage installation at the ACE site, and it will enable ACE to offer unique testing procedures to producers of aquaculture structures. This proposal focuses on providing a tool for commercial scale test facilities to document the performance of new technology regarding escapement and to provide data on how the structure affect the fish distribution and behaviour on a population scale.