Abstract
In recent years, fish farming facilities and the aquaculture industry are gradually moving towards more offshore (or exposed) locations, bringing new opportunities to increase their value creation through better production conditions regarding the aquatic environment due to space availability and water quality which can be extremely beneficial, resulting in more stable farming conditions. This study is focused on the demand for a code of practice for the design, operation, and survey of aquaculture vessels, particularly in offshore regions.
However, offshore aquaculture requires the vessels to operate in more severe sea states, which require the farming structure, station-keeping systems, and vessel-farming site interaction to be more robust. On the other hand, the specific operations demanded from a fish farm vessel, such as net handling, anchoring, mooring, towing, delousing, feeding and live fish transporting, require specific guidelines that can cover the vessel and system design as well as their safe operation.
Relevant rules and regulations from national and international guides and standards, including the Australian National Standard for Commercial Vessels (NSCV), and rules and guidelines of classification societies, are reviewed. Furthermore, the study discusses the current research studies centred around aquaculture vessel design and operations, including crew transfer vessels for fish farms, bunkering and alternative fuel sources. Finally, this paper aims to identify the current gaps and similar guidelines and research concepts towards developing a code of practice for aquaculture vessels. A framework for developing such a novel code of practice for offshore aquaculture service vessels in line with the other current efforts on the safety of aquaculture operations will be discussed.
