Scallop dredging

[Pentlandpirate]

Well I've just had my first contact with SAMS about it, so we'll see if it goes anywhere. they seem to be the perfect facility to investigate ideas like this and they're local too.

[Peter Connelly]

Here's a link to a patent, Pentland. On page 8 it says that the invention might have uses in comercial fishing.

http://www.google.co.uk/patents?id=6fU0 ... q=&f=false

[Pentlandpirate]

Thanks Peter. That is VERY interesting! What knowledge do you have to make you think of looking that up? At least it shows I'm not so daft!

[Eric the Viking]

drive the fish into a concentrated area, over relatively shallow, smooth sea bed, where you can hold them within the wall of sound and scoop them up with nets

and how is that any different than searching with SONAR for a concentrated shoal or school of fish and 'scooping it up with nets' apart from being infinitely more expensive and a logistical nightmare. How many buoys, boats and acoustic sea collies would you need to achieve this.

Factor in weather, tides, fuel and labour costs and you will see this is simply the ramblings of a fool!

[Seventhseil]

Dont worry I am sure PP has a novel under ten metre fish farming vessel design powered by Flettner rotors, skysails kites and hydrogen cells, DP 2 compliant as well I am sure.

[Pentlandpirate]

and you will see this is simply the ramblings of a fool!

Benjamin Franklin, statesman, philosopher, scientist, inventor, writer...1706-1790 wrote some sense....

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most fools do"

I'm sure many of the men who ceated the World's great inventions were branded fools by their sceptics. By definition an inventor has to have the optimism, drive and imagination that others do not. Eric, you clearly cannot conceive what I see.

[canUsmellthat]

"I'm sure many of the men who ceated the World's great inventions were branded fools..."

You're not one of the worlds greatest inventors so don't worry about being branded a fool...

The fish-ranch sonar fencing idea is intriguing but what about stuff floating through it, creating escape holes in the "wall of sound"...it would be near-impossible to devise a species specific deterrent sound, maybe I'm wrong but I don't think so...perhaps the good folks of SAMS can prove otherwise...

[canUsmellthat]

And what about undeterred predators??? The more one thinks about the idea, the less feasible it becomes...

[Pentlandpirate]

Such negativity......you're complete non-starters. You're doomed already!
How do you know I haven't the potential to invent something great, like millions of other people? As long as we're prepared to try something we have the potential to discover something new.

Oh my God, what about holes in the wall of sound? Oh No it's doomed to failure. Well, you just work at making it better using technology and design to find a solution, the way Man originally succeeded in making things that we now take for granted. And as for making it possible to control the movement of individual species, I think it could be entirely possible.

[Eric the Viking]

How do you know I haven't the potential to invent something great

Call it intuition

Why don't you retire to the shed at the bottom of your garden and potter away and come back and let us know when its finished Captain Nemo?

[canUsmellthat]

I'd say that the fish that don't escape through a sonar blind spot will be eaten up by the predators swimming through and finding an easy meal...

"Oh my God, what about holes in the wall of sound? Oh No it's doomed to failure."

Yes, listen to yourself...please...

[Pentlandpirate]

CanU: Farmers don't give up when a fox or wolf gets amongst their livestock: they do something about it.

Eric, I think we've been down this road before. You may scoff at other's ideas, but what's your contribution to anything? If you never try something you will never know what you might achieve.

This thread might have been more interesting, and possibly beneficial to the local community if you had said, Ok there might be a problem with predators? How could we deal with this? What do you think if we.....

[canUsmellthat]

Look, I played fair and gave it credence, asked you to explain it and gave variables that would challenge the concept...You brought it down and sounded, to me, like you were just shouting back "It'll work, it'll work, shut up everone else, it'll work damn you!"...You didn't, and still haven't, come up with solutions to the "holes" in your brilliant invention...

[Eric the Viking]

I'm almost in hysterics laughing about the "

sowing those areas with man-made fish foods

"

You've still to answer that one apart from the obvious problems with intra and interspecies competiton there would be a massive eutrophication issue but posssibly of more concern is whats this fish food going to be made of?

Do you scoop up millions of tonnes of another fish species simply to feed another? That hardly makes sense.

Or are we talking about some terrestrial foodstuff grown and/or sythesized to provide the correct balance of essential proteins,carbohydrates,oils, amino acids, pigmentation and vitamins bound to together in tasty bite size pieces in a form that will be easy to transport and then randomly thrown into the sea. If so are we looking a devoting huge areas of valuable and productive agricultural land for this scheme to provide protein rich food for fish which creates a huge net energy loss for us humans(tertiary consumers) at the top of the food chain. Think about it - does it not make more sense economically and biologically to use agricultural areas to produce first and foremost vegetable/cereal crops(producers), then fodder/grazing for hebivores(primary consumers) and lastly as an artifical food source for carnivores(secondary consumers)?

Your not some undiscovered genius, Pentland - a new Da Vice, Eddison, Logie-Baird or whoever - simply a daft man with an even dafter idea.

[Pentlandpirate]

You're not some undiscovered genius, Pentland - a new Da Vice, Eddison, Logie-Baird or whoever - simply a daft man with an even dafter idea.

. I never said I was. Even at the start I didn't say I had the answers. I did suggest an idea that I felt merited investigation and discussion. I'm now better informed for some of the comments you have made suggesting problems and pitfalls, but each of them I only see as a challenge to be overcome. I'm sure that the people at research facilities, like SAMS, and universities up and down the country see life the same way and I'm sure many of the projects they work on may seem just as impossible.

You can laugh at the man who tries to do something, but you'll probably find most people give more respect to the man who tries and fails than the one who fails to try.

[canUsmellthat]

You're a righteous man PP...

[Pentlandpirate]

Thanks, I try. But you've got to admit CanU, I wouldn't just be righteous, I would be PERFECT if that was really me in my avatar.

Anyhow, enough of this thread, seriously I am going to see if I can take this idea of a 'deep sea ranch' further. If anyone wants to offer assistance, even constructive criticism, then great. I will report back to advise whether those more in the know think I am completely daft, or whether they consider it is something worth investigating.

Eric's suggestion I hide in a shed like Captain Nemo at the bottom of the garden at least shows he's heard of Jules Verne. Surely he must then understand that Jules Verne wasn't an inventor but he wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before navigable aircraft and practical submarines were invented, and before any means of space travel had been devised. Consequently He had no idea how to make a submarine or an airship, but he had a concept that he thought could be created in the future. His ideas were science fiction.....but now they are everyday fact!

Call me Captain Nemo, call me daft. A negative attitude will never get you anywhere: didn't your mother teach you the word 'Can't' doesn't exist?

[Pentlandpirate]

Non-physical fish barrier systems: their development and potential applications to marine ranching, see http://www.springerlink.com/content/nht7500061k04283/

Development of a Non-Physical Fish Fence System using Combined Infrasonic and Electric Fields, see http://www.icit.hw.ac.uk/fishfence.htm

Thankfully there plenty more fools with ludicrous ideas from where I came from.

[canUsmellthat]

Aww, so it wasn't even your idea...aww that's just bad luck...


"The aim of this EU funded research project was to develop a non-physical fish fence which may be applied to fish farming, providing barriers for the water intakes of power stations, protecting pleasure beaches from sharks and providing a new method of fishing."
© Copyright 2001 Heriot-Watt University

Here we have the idea being put forward for sensible application...I'd like to read the Bullen et al (2003) article, not just the introduction which is always designed to wet our appetites...

[canUsmellthat]

Yes, there is a lot of literature on the use of acoustic barrier applications in fish farming, going back to the early 90's...nothing I have read so far has suggested, or tried, to have a stand alone non-phisical barrier in an open system because it is just not practical due to predation...