Queen Mary University of London hosted the first annual hybrid workshop of the Safe and Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture project on 5th August, led by Dr Eldad Avital, the leader of the international consortium.

The workshop brought together academic and industrial partners from the UK, Norway, Greece, India and China to review Year 1 progress and plan the next stage of the project.

The Queen Mary team presented progress in high-fidelity CFD and fluid–structure interaction modelling, offshore cage systems, renewable-energy integration and service-vessel studies.

Excellent in-person contributions from AKVA Group Norway covered biofouling mitigation and CFD, while NTUA Greece presented work on cage and experimental design, hydrodynamics and CFD validation, and Griffon Marine UK discussed the development of service vessels for offshore aquaculture. BFP-Tech Greece and IIT Madras India joined online, presenting research on anti-biofouling treatments and wave-energy converters, simulation and experimental testing.

Technical discussions focused on cage reliability, biofouling, renewable-energy integration, experimental validation and strengthening integration between the different research activities.

The workshop demonstrated the value of bringing together academia and industry across several countries and disciplines to address the engineering challenges of moving aquaculture further offshore and to develop the skills and training needed by the sector.

The project is funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation.