If you’ve ever been on a tour of our oyster hatchery, you probably noticed that nearly 50% of our facility’s footprint is designated to the production of microalgae, the primary source of food for oysters during their early developmental stages.
Since 2015, we have grown microalgae in the traditional way involving the highly-appealing, colorful bubbling flasks of algae cultures, open tanks and hanging bags — a tried and true system that has allowed us to produce about 15 trillions of algae per day. While this has worked, we find ourselves needing a lot more food in the spring time to feed the volume of baby oysters that we are now holding in the hatchery to meet demand.
One technology that has come around is the algae photobioreactor, which OSH invested in this season. These photobioreactors provide a controlled environment to optimize algal growth, minimize external contamination, and can improve efficiency and reliability.
Did you know that the oysters in our hatchery consume four to five species of algae during the different phases of their lifecycle to meet their nutritional needs?
Algae cultivation not only requires a significant amount of space, but also labor, resources, and serious sterilization practices to avoid risks of contamination. One of the biggest reasons that we chose a photobioreactor instead of more of the systems we already have is because the bioreactors (while they offer less redundancy and therefore have longer downtime than some of our other systems) do offer significant time and labor savings.
Here’s how it works. Our bioreactor system provides an optimal condition to conduct photosynthesis using light and carbon dioxide, so that we only need to monitor and control nutrient input. The closed system is able to monitor microalgae growth rates, and adjust those four variables accordingly. This technology is meant to increase supply and improve consistency in the production of high-quality algae.
While there is still much to learn about the equipment, we are running the bioreactor simultaneously with our regular algae production. Our team is constantly working to innovate commercial production, and through trial and error, we hope to be able to scale our growing techniques, continue to improve the conditions for improving larvae survival, and meet the seed supply needs in our industry.