April 21, 2023 — The first offshore fish farm off from New England’s coast has been proposed by a New Hampshire group called Blue Water Fisheries in conjunction with Innovasea Systems, Inc.
The farm would be composed of about 40 submersible fish pens that would be moored roughly seven and a half miles off the coast of Newburyport, Mass.
Blue Water Fisheries hopes to grow millions of pounds of salmon and steelhead trout on the farm, as well as lumpfish for a research study. However, the group will have to go through many approvals with NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before it is a set-in-stone project.
The farm will acquire all-female trout eggs from Trout Lodge and Riverance hatcheries of Rochester, Wash. The eggs are deemed as disease-free and will be hatched in the farm’s freshwater hatchery for up to eight months before being acclimated to saltwater and then be transferred into the offshore SeaStations.