A local company is taking their underwater fish farming cages up north after receiving a Canadian patent.

Hawaii Oceanic Technology, Inc. has been growing thousands of Yellow Fin Tuna in the specially-designed cages in Hawaii since 2009. The company has a 247-acre lease site off the North Kohala coast of the Big Island.

The company has received US and Philippine patents and is expecting patents in the EU, Japan and Australia, according to TheFishSite. They plan to sell and license the underwater tanks, called Oceanspheres, globally. You can check out pictures of the tanks on the company’s website.

The technology raised alarms among a couple of environmental organizations, which we wrote about back in 2011.

image

Photo credit: Flickr user nilsrinaldi.

 Alice Terry

What it means to support Civil Beat.

Supporting Civil Beat means you’re investing in a newsroom that can devote months to investigate corruption. It means we can cover vulnerable, overlooked communities because those stories matter. And, it means we serve you. And only you.

Donate today and help sustain the kind of journalism Hawaiʻi cannot afford to lose.