Old single hull oil crude tankers converted to deep sea fish hatcheries. cleaned and refitted Aerated tanks with ideal filtered salt water conditions (no predators)

Multiple compartments for different stages of growth, or different commercial species, or fish food stocks.

Periodically the individual tanks can be taken out of service and sanitized with a mild hydrogen peroxide solution, or chlorinated and then de chlorinated with sodium bisulfite.

half bake a fish?
-- meandeanmachine, Jul 19 2005

Open ocean fish farms. http://www.npr.org/...php?storyId=3620330
[Antegrity, Jul 20 2005]

Cute. Not sure we know enough about deep sea fish to breed them, but it's certainly worth the effort.
-- DrCurry, Jul 19 2005


This is a great idea. We've already sunk old, sand blasted oil tanks offshore as artificial reefs and the fish love them. If you wanted to use these tankers as a breeding enviroment safe from predators, you could simply open holes in the side with screens on them. Then place the ship in the path of an underwater current that would flow through the tanks bringing nutrients and oxygen. When the lil' suckers are all grown up, open the holds, flush 'em out and start all over again.

You ought to send this idea to the public relations departments of some oil companies. It would help to take the edge off the image of the oil tanker as destroyer of the environment and I bet they would at least look into it.

Cool idea.
-- doctorremulac3, Jul 19 2005


On the surface, or the bottom?
-- Shz, Jul 19 2005


If you sunk the bow of the ship, and left the rear part floating on the surface, then you would have many tanks at different depths, for different types of fish, and divers could visit by visiting the stern section and decending through the tanks....
-- Minimal, Jul 19 2005


I'd hate to see a giant fish spill at sea, polluting our oil rich waters.
-- Giblet, Jul 20 2005


Humor aside, great idea.

You could park a bunch of them offshore of impoverished nations and truck fishy protein to the starving.
-- Giblet, Jul 20 2005


//ideal filtered salt water conditions (no predators)//

Thats not too smart. Without predators, fish swim less and dont taste as good. They did a study.

+ FOR THE REST.
-- DesertFox, Jul 20 2005


Throw in a couple of small predators per batch to keep their reflexes up?
-- meandeanmachine, Jul 20 2005


Apart from the lack of a business model, this should work (don't want to quibble, but this one is good enough to consider seriously).
-- wagster, Jul 20 2005


...and the idea hasn't attracted a singe fish. Ah, the irony. +
-- Fishrat, Jul 20 2005


I did communicate with one Captain who has sailed a crude tanker, his comment was slightly sarcastic ... "most crude tankers end up as razor blades", so I guess whoever owns it would weigh the price of scrap vs whatever someone is willing to pay for it to do the retrofitting required. Your average crude tanker would have more than 20 million gallons of growing room for fish, a supertanker ten times that. Yeah, a couple of these off the East coast of Africa could have a positive impact on hunger. You would think.
-- meandeanmachine, Jul 21 2005


What would be cool is a deep-ocean research fish enclosure-- a net/tank 2mi deep to observerve the fish there.
-- sninctown, Mar 09 2006


SIGN ME UP!

As a diver I see how this works on a small scale, lovely to try scaling it up.
-- normzone, Mar 09 2006


//Without predators, fish swim less//
perhaps fake "predators": audiovisual cues to scare the fish.

//sanitized// just wash them out unless you have an infestation of some sort.

So how are they going to be fed, anyways ?

it's a [+] but frankly this belongs with all the posts on what to do with old storage-containers: a used supertanker may not be the optimal design for what you want.
-- FlyingToaster, Jul 25 2009


Remember salt water is denser than oil, so you couldn't just open a hatch at the bottom and allow water to gush in—it might sink the ship!

It might work, but you'd have to do a careful engineering analysis to see if the ship could handle the increased weight.

Still, I think it's an idea worth further thought.
-- Jim Bob of Merriam Park, Jul 25 2009


good idea, but be careful with the water in the hatchery. You wouldn't want to inadvertently introduce new species (such as algae or mussels) to an area.
-- Gamma48, Jul 26 2009


How would you deal with the effects of newly concentrated fish wastes in the area?
-- ryokan, Jul 28 2009



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