Open Ocean Aquaculture

Unsustainable overfishing of the high seas is stressing our supply of protein from the ocean, and environmental degradation on continental shelves is further damaging the ocean environment (evident from the widening dead zones where oxygen depletion greatly curtails marine life). All this, even as our global population is expected to increase from six billion to nine billion by mid-century, requiring major expansion of global food supply.
 
Farm-raised fish (aquaculture) is needed to satisfy the growing demand for protein from the sea, but traditional aquaculture relies on fishmeal and fishoil from the ocean "reduction" fisheries - the supply of which also is flat or declining. Grain-based food supply for aquaculture is a poor substitute as it is low in healthy omega-3 fatty acids, and shifting to grain-based food for aquaculture just adds stress and increases prices of our global food supply.
 
Our strategy to reverse these trends is to deploy large numbers of free-drifting Atmocean pumps in the open oceans, upwelling nutrients to enhance phytoplankton which forms the base of the ocean food chain. Over time, more and larger fish should grow - in fact we estimate up to 1.5 tons per pump per year. This should support increased wild-caught fish, both for consumer markets and for the aquaculture reduction fisheries.