Exploring mechanisms for harvesting of farmed seaweed

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore different harvesting mechanisms for farmed seaweed off of a line. The seaweed market is large and growing globally, and currently relies heavily on manual labor and coastal waters for the farming process. The main goals of the designed mechanisms are to achieve a simple, reliable system that can be implemented on seaweed farms and allow off-shore farming as well as increase overall efficiency by reducing the reliance on manual labor. Alongside a colleague, we designed and built three iterations of the mechanism and I propose a fourth design that we will be exploring in the future. The three designs center around different actuation and cutting methods. The first design uses a ski lift actuation method and a circular saw blade as the cutting instrument. The second design uses the same cutting method but a spool method for actuation (described in more detail in paper). The third design uses a suction method for cutting and has multiple actuation methods. The designed mechanisms are then tested with live seaweed. By comparing the results of these tests and evaluating each design across a few metrics that we learned by speaking to seaweed farmers and throughout the process of building the mechanisms, I propose a fourth theoretical design that aims to improve on all previous designs and meet the proposed design requirements.