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Development of automated technology for large scale land based production of lobster juveniles and lobster to market size, including development of robotic feeding and imaging control system (LobsterPlant)
Start date: Sep 15, 2008, End date: Sep 14, 2011 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Strategic Objectives Addressed: The proposed project is focused on making large scale land based farming of European and American lobster feasible, both financially and practically, by developing automated technology for feeding and monitoring of each lobster individually. European and American lobster are cannibalistic in nature, and are therefore kept in individual housing cells demanding individual handling, which without automated technology has proven to be too labour consuming. The LobsterPlant project will by making large scale farming of lobster a reality, contribute to filling the gap between market demand and market supply of lobster and reduce the need to harvest natural lobster, whose population is already low due to over harvesting. There is currently no competing technology on the market which makes large scale farming of lobster feasible, so the proposing partners are hence creating a new market for themselves. Abstract: The demand for European lobster exceeds supply. Current European lobster landings can only supply 2–7% of the market demand as the natural stock is simply insufficient to sustain an annual harvest required by the market due to over fishing which has depleted stocks. Large scale aquaculture of lobster is an alternative method to provide the supply to the market, but has not to date been feasible due to lack of automated technology available. The LobsterPlant project will make large scale farming of lobster possible by developing of: • automated feeding and imaging technology for feeding and monitoring of the lobsters • cleaning technology for removal of waste in raceways • feed of right stability for the automated feeding technology and • determine optimal methods for control of water quality in lobster plants
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