A site management system for shellfish aquaculture

Abstract

A production management and planning system has been developed for large‐scale hanging culture operations. The relational database was designed to provide a fast, reliable and versatile tool for managing large volumes of production data at a scallop aquaculture site. The application development process is described, starting with the set of management decisions to be supported by the software. Best practices used for data structure design included normalization and entity‐relationship diagramming. The process‐based design resulted in visually consistent and user‐friendly interfaces which minimize data entry errors. An integrated forecasting model, based on seasonal exponential smoothing, extrapolates stagewise mortalities and flows calculated from the database. Typical simulation results demonstrate how forecasts provide insight into the grow‐out dynamics for capacity planning, manpower planning, and dealing with seasonal fluctuations in the yields. The software generates daily production reports, weekly harvesting schedules and long‐range planning information.