* Halifax to Rotterdam route serves seafood trade
* To compete against air freight for lobster transport
* Aquariums in containers
COPENHAGEN, April 19 (Reuters) - The world's biggest container shipper, Maersk Line, has opened a route from Halifax in Nova Scotia to Rotterdam to meet growing demand for transport of live shellfish, Maersk and its partner Aqualife said. Since 2005 Maersk Line, which belongs to Danish oil and shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk, and Aqualife have been working together to develop patented transport systems for live seafood.
Aqualife is the marketing and branding arm of the partnership, while Maersk Line provides the tanks, containers, vessels and global transport network. The partners hold the patents jointly.
"We see growing demand for this product," Thomas Eskesen, senior director of Maersk's refrigerated cargo business, said on Monday.
"It is a very exclusive product because the value of the lobster and crabs and mussels is high," he told Reuters. "Now is the right time to go for Halifax."
Aqualife A/S said in a statement that the new route would give it a competitive advantage in its bid to woo transport of Canadian lobsters over to sea traffic from air freight.
"It is possible to create a business based on the lobster corridor between Canada and Europe which over time can be worth hundreds of millions (of Danish crowns)," Aqualife said.
It said that North American lobster exports to Europe are worth around 1.3 billion Danish crowns ($244.1 million) annually, and freight revenues from the trade -- which up to now has gone entirely by air -- are worth around 180 million.
Aqualife said that around 15,000 tonnes of live lobster are exported annually from North America to Europe, with about 3,400 tonnes of that total coming from Canada's Atlantic coast.
It said that lobster is eastern Canada's most important export article.
Aqualife said its business would get a boost when fresh foodstuffs in the French retail market are required from 2011 to be labelled with the product's carbon footprint, since sea transport involves lower carbon emissions than air freight.
The Aqualife/Maersk transport unit consists of 20 water tanks in a refrigerated shipping container. "You can liken it to a small aquarium in a container," Eskesen said.
He said that shellfish are packed in ice for air transport.
"When we transport them, they remain in water so they are in their natural environment, if you like, through the transport," he said.
He said the Icelandic volcano now disrupting air traffic across Europe underscored the timeliness of the concept.
"The irony is I suppose that, with the volcanic eruption, you cannot get any products," he said. "Many customers around Europe rely on air frieght -- such as salmon exporters in Scotland or flower growers in Holland."
(Reporting by John Acher; Editing by Michael Shields)