Saving Seafood

Maryland oyster industry hoping for rebound as new season begins

October 26, 2021 — This time last year, Jason Wilford was preparing to bring his farm-grown oysters to a Thanksgiving pop-up sale in Easton.

Events like that one were something of a lifeline for Wilford, a newcomer to the industry. With the coronavirus pandemic raging as the weather grew colder in the fall of 2020, many seafood restaurants were closed or offered only carryout. There was practically nowhere for his first batch of hand-raised oysters to go.

Experts say covid-19 depressed demand for oysters, in part because shucking them wasn’t popular among diners looking for quick to-go meals. That sank prices for harvesters on the Chesapeake Bay.

This year, aquaculture farmers such as Wilford and those in the rest of the oyster industry — watermen, seafood restaurants and distributors — are hoping for a rebound in demand.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

MAINE: Groups seek out gaps in seafood harvesting training programs

October 25, 2021 — Seafood harvesters face a sea of challenges ahead. Three organizations are working to figure out how training programs can help the next generation weather the storm.

Maine Sea Grant, the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries and the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association have all teamed up through a federal program to help prepare up-and-coming fishermen and aquaculturists.

In December, Congress passed the Young Fishermen’s Development Act to preserve the country’s fishing heritage through training and assistance for commercial fishermen. Funding has yet to be allocated for any work, but these groups are working to figure out opportunities and challenges ahead, so that when money is made available, they can hit the ground running.

“We’re going to be reaching out to tons of fishermen, people involved in the aquaculture industry and a lot of young folks,” said Natalie Springuel, a Bar Harbor-based marine extension associate with Maine Sea Grant.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

 

Maine Aquaculture Association releases first-of-its-kind occupational standards for industry

October 22, 2021 — The Maine Aquaculture Association (MAA) released occupational standards for the state’s aquaculture industry this week, publicly setting the bar for workforce skills and training needs in the marine finfish, land-based recirculating aquaculture system, land-based shellfish hatchery, and marine shellfish and sea vegetable sectors.

According to the organization, this is the first occupational standards document in the country for the aquaculture industry.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

A test to diagnose psychopaths can help identify fish behaviours that could benefit aquaculture

October 19, 2021 — Personality profiling is not unique to criminology. The method is used to identify health risks, aid personnel recruitment, develop education programs and build dating apps. Despite this wide range of applications, there is one thing all these approaches have in common: they are almost exclusively used on humans.

Biologists recognize that animals have personality traits that are consistent across time. However, animal behaviour is often studied in large groups of animals so that data can be collected to investigate wide-scale trends. This means the need to build detailed personality profiles on an individual scale is uncommon.

Unless, as demonstrated by the case of Jack the Ripper, there are unknown individuals within a population that exhibit a rare behaviour and are avoiding detection.

Cleaner fish remove and eat parasites from the skin of other fishes. Some species of cleaner fish are used in salmon aquaculture to help control parasitic sea lice. Lumpfish are a commonly used cleaner fish, and millions of juveniles are released into salmon farms each year. However, only a minority of lumpfish (around 20 per cent) actually clean salmon of sea lice, while the rest either ignore salmon or compete for pellet food.

It is unclear why only certain lumpfish clean salmon and observing this behaviour is exceedingly rare. As part of a research team at the Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Research at Swansea University, my colleagues and I tried to solve this mystery by following the same logic as the Hare Psychopathy Checklist.

We designed a series of behavioural tests to build detailed personality profiles of lumpfish, in hope of identifying the individuals that showed cleaning behaviour. This involved testing for variation in activity, aggression, anxiety, boldness and sociality of individual lumpfish over repeated sessions, and then recording how these individuals interacted with salmon.

Read the full story at The Conversation

 

WASHINGTON: Puget Sound tribe uses aquaculture to counter salmon shortages

October 18, 2021 — A new video from the Washington Policy Center (WPC) highlights the efforts of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in the Puget Sound area to develop an aquaculture program to provide economic opportunity and a food source for its community.

“As we work to restore the salmon population in Puget Sound, tribes are finding creative ways to feed their members and become more self-sufficient,” said Todd Myers, environmental director at the WPC. “Tribes have the local control and flexibility that allows them to follow good science to manage aquaculture that is sustainable and provides good food.”

The late Kurt Grinnell, who was a tribal council member and general manager of the aquaculture program, explains in the video that just a few generations ago the local rivers and tributaries were filled with an unending supply of salmon. It got to the point though, that he shut down his fishing business because he was catching so few fish that selling them did not bring in enough money to even pay for the gas for his boat.

Read the full story at The Center Square

 

FAO head calls for innovation to support aquaculture growth

October 6, 2021 — World governments must embrace innovation and equity if the global aquaculture sector is to grow sustainably and be an all-inclusive food sector, according to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General Qu Dongyu.

Dongyu said at the recent Global Conference on Aquaculture Millenium+20 in Shanghai, China, that aquaculture is currently the fastest growing agri-food sector – especially in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean –where there is “huge potential for further expansion.”

“Aquaculture production will continue to grow, but the benefits of this growth must be equitable and fairly distributed,” Dongyu said.

The conference, which is the fourth in the series, was organized by the FAO and China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, together with the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA), and featured addresses by several global seafood industry leaders and government representatives.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Disease resistance gene pinpointed in farmed salmon, trout

September 24, 2021 — Using a combination of genomics and gene-editing technologies, a team of scientists has identified a gene that has a major role in the resistance of salmonids to Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis Virus (IPNV), a disease that can cause high mortality levels in farmed salmon and trout.

The study, carried out by the Roslin Institute and Hendrix Genetics – together with the University of Stirling; the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science; and Uppsala University – identified the gene Nedd8 Activating Enzyme E1 (Nae1) in Atlantic salmon using CRISPR gene-editing technology.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

‘Blue Food Revolution’ to Tackle Climate Change and Malnutrition

September 22, 2021 — Doubling of global demand for aquatic foods calls for a ‘blue food revolution’ to tackle climate change and malnutrition, new research argues.

An unprecedented review of the aquatic foods sector has uncovered how fisheries and aquaculture can play a greater role in delivering healthy diets and more sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems around the world.

Five peer-reviewed papers in the journal Nature highlight the opportunities to leverage the vast diversity of aquatic, or “blue,” foods in the coming decades to address malnutrition, lower the environmental footprint of the food system, and provide livelihoods.

“People are trying to make more informed choices about the food they eat, in particular the environmental footprint of their food,” said Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, who with colleagues examined the environmental sustainability of aquatic foods, the potential for the growth of small-scale producers and the climate risks that face aquatic food systems. “For the first time we pulled together data from hundreds of studies on a wide range of seafood species to help answer that question. Blue foods stack up really well overall and provide a great option for sustainable food.”

The research projects that global demand for blue foods will roughly double by 2050, and will be met primarily through increased aquaculture production rather than by capture fisheries.

Investing in innovation and improving fisheries management could increase consumption even more and have profound effects on malnutrition. For instance, a “high growth” modeling scenario showed that increasing supply by 15.5 million tons (8%), causing a drop in prices, would reduce cases of nutrient deficiencies by 166 million, especially among low-income populations.

Read the full story at ECO Magazine

 

MAINE: Large-scale aquaculture moratorium explored

September 20, 2021 — The Planning Board was charged Thursday night with drafting a moratorium prohibiting any proposed large-scale aquaculture projects in town from consideration for six months. The Select Board’s directive is intended to provide time to review and possibly revamp the town’s current regulations and give town officials greater authority over open-ocean finfish farms seeking to locate a processing plant, hatchery or other infrastructure on land in town.

At its meeting Thursday night, the Select Board voted 5-0 to direct the Planning Board to review and refine the draft “Town of Gouldsboro Moratorium Ordinance — Aquaculture Development” before presenting it to townspeople at a public hearing. Then, voters will have the final say on the proposed aquaculture development moratorium at a special town meeting. The impetus to put the question soon to voters is being driven by the Select Board’s concern that the town’s “quality of life and health and safety” could be jeopardized in the near future unless its regulations are updated to include finfish farms whose ocean sites comprise 10 acres or more.

At the Select Board’s request, attorney Tim Pease of Rudman Winchell of Bangor drew up the draft moratorium and gave an overview to the few dozen citizens who attended Thursday’s meeting in person and via Zoom. Earlier this month, the town contracted Rudman Winchell to review Gouldsboro’s shoreland, land use zoning, solid waste and harbor ordinances and comprehensive plan and determine whether they were adequate to deal with large-scale fish farms. The answer was no.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

 

UMaine launches marine product program to help drive the state’s ‘blue economy’

August 31, 2021 — A new University of Maine program aims to deepen partnerships between science and business experts in the state’s fisheries, aquaculture sector and other working-waterfront industries.

UMaine’s Darling Marine Center and Maine Business School are launching the UMaine Blue Economy Program, where students, faculty, communities and industry partners will work together to conduct research and develop products related to Maine’s ocean-based commerce, according to a news release.

The graduate education and research initiative is supported with a $50,000 award from the William Procter Scientific Innovation Fund.

“The UMaine Blue Economy Program builds on more than 55 years of creative collaboration at the Darling Marine Center among scientists, entrepreneurs and other professionals,” Darling’s director, Heather Leslie, said in the release. “It will enable us to deepen partnerships among science and business experts while enhancing UMaine’s contributions to fisheries, aquaculture and other working waterfront-dependent industries of the state.”

Read the full story at MaineBiz