Saves materials and energy

  • 3 to 5 times longer Life of Reef Facility as compared to conventional rope-based mussel aquaculture facilities

  • Eliminates surface risks and maintenance of easily-amortisable constructive ropes or plastic floaters exposed to sun light

  • No need to seed mussels into facility (using Spat material) – mussels larvae attach naturally by themselves

  • No consumables usage (cotton or plastic meshes and collector ropes)

  • Less resource usage –marine operations, energy

Decreases labour costs

  • Less labour costs, related to production: mussels grow organically with no human intervention, no need of rearranging them on the construction

  • Due to the 3-5 times longer life cycle – less labour for change of the facilities is needed

  • High level of harvesting mechanization

Efficient use of space

  • Utilizes for mussel production more than 2 times more water layers of 10m, than the conventional technologies, whose facilities only occupy 4-5m from the water layers of the sea.

  • Decreased probability of incidents: the fully submerged installation and modular concept of ORTO is designed to avoid collisions on the surface with marine vessels or different floating objects and hence helps avoid equipment losses and breakages.

Avoids common risks

Pisa Reef is bottom anchored but floating vertically always a few meters below the surface and thus eliminates the most common risks of conventional technologies located at the upper layers of the Sea:

  • Avoids the destructive energy of the waves by being in the deeper layers and leans down because of wave and current pressure

  • Independent from tides

  • Protected from unstable temperature conditions in the surface layers and prevents mussel die out at 28 °C

  • Far away from surface icing and ice collisions

  • Avoids surface chemical pollutions – oil products or light fresh water from the shore

  • No UV-rays can reach and damage the construction elements

  • Not affected by random floating objects or marine litter or tree logs

  • No risks from collisions with jets, yachts, boats and danger for human life

  • No risk of “Domino effect” damages – due to the compact modular type and submerged position, each Pisa Reef is independent and will not lead to further breakages in the neighbouring constructions as it is with the most popular conventional technologies – the Long Line

reef

Technology reliability

  • Control production quality: as weather, chemicals, and incidents risks are minimised, production flow is much more guaranteed

  • Control production volumes: shielded from sudden temperature rises due to extreme weather or climate change, mussels grow with less risk to die out due to unfavourable conditions of the environment.

  • Preventing the risk of new regulatory measures regarding the use of synthetic ropes (which emit micro plastics) to affect ORTO, because of its solid design.

ORTO production environment ensures the highest possible quality and taste of reef mussels.

  • Guaranteed taste: grow in the deep and avoid chemicals and other unfavourable and otherwise uncontrollable factors of the surface production environment.

  • No sand particles: grow above the sea bottom

  • Less micro-plastics contaminants: Pisa Reef construction does not emit any micro plastics contrary of synthetic ropes of Long-Line technologies 

As buying ORTO mussels the consumers directly contributes to preserving the environment and betterment of ecosystems, it poses a unique opportunity to:

  • Increase the market value of mussel and co-species

  • Enter niche markets with a boutique offering for the constantly-growing market of the environmentally conscious consumers

Integrated System for Sustainable Offshore Fish-Mussels Reef Aquacultures

The Reefs modules are positioned around the fish cages. Advantages:

  1. The filters (mussels) on the Reefs reduce the eutrophication effects of fish feed metabolites and unconsumed fish feed, which minimizes the local negative environmental impact of the farm.
  2. Decreases diseases and parasites thanks to mussels, leading to reduction in fish mortality and better health and environmental conditions. This factor directly increases the production quantity of the fish farm.
  3. Vertically integrated production – provides cheaper feed for the fish from the reef products: fish, mussels, shrimps, sea snails, crabs, seaweed, etc., enabling more independence from the feed prices, sources and logistics, increasing the sustainability of the business.
  4. Artificial reefs provide the best condition for the main inhabitant – mussels, and free co-growing additional variety of different high priced species:, shrimps, sea snails, crabs.  The diversification of the farm products and entering new markets is an option.
  5. The business is eco sustainable because of the natural symbiotic environment with better fish health and quality, better market Image, more added value leading to higher price of the trade mark.
  6. Installed Artificial reefs around the fish cages significantly reduce the effect of wave energy and thus enabling fish farming to go into less protected offshore waters. Consequently, more space for the fish farm, better physical protection, longer life cycle of the expensive cages and better active flow through the aquatory – low environmental impact and healthier fish.
  7. All these environmental, health benefits and de-eutrophication measurements may serve in front the administrative authorities:
    • easier access to marine aquatory permissions
    • tax concessions
    • grants and subsidies
    • payments for positive environmental services
  1. Every Reef module can produce a salt water jet stream for additional aeration and other needs of fish farms by transforming the power of the sea current.
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