Despite the cost advantages associated with shell on bottom-culture oyster farming, several challenges persist in the industry. One major issue is the difficulty faced by growers in identifying suitable underwater areas within submerged leases for oyster seed deployment. Often, seed deployment happens randomly, resulting in significant seed wastage when they land on unsuitable substrates like mud or silt instead of the desired substrate.
To address this problem, a promising solution in development—an underwater drone equipped with remote sensing capabilities designed to measure water quality and map the lease ground. The technology is intended to reduce input waste and optimize oyster farming practices . To assess the feasibility of implementing this technology for oyster growers, a preliminary economic
analysis was conducted . using data gathered from a farm survey conducted in 2018 in the state of Maryland. The analysis involved simulating the performance of 100,000 farms, assuming a triangular distribution for input and capital costs. The Net Present value from this analysis indicated that the S3AM technology could potentially be more profitable for larger farms (figure 3) as compared to smaller ones (figure 1). Here we considered a farm that produces 200 bushels/year as small, 2000 bushels/year as medium and 6000 bushels/ year as a large farm.
We will further perform analysis to measure other financial performance measures such as break-even price and yield above total and variable cost, and investment analysis under various production scenarios to fully evaluate its potential benefits and cost effectiveness under various production scenarios.