Saving Seafood

MAINE: American Aquafarms application still stalled

January 13, 2022 — American Aquafarms’ Project Development Director Tom Brennan has a key to the closed Maine Fair Trade plant. Brennan says the power, heat and Wi-Fi are all on in the Prospect Harbor facility that has not yet changed hands. He says the Norwegian-backed company is planning to launch its series of online “Community Conversations” in coming weeks.

In addition, Brennan said American Aquafarms took down its website weeks ago. A new site has been designed and will be launched in the near future.

Reached late last week while driving from Prospect Harbor to southern Maine, Brennan said it’s his understanding that American Aquafarms is close to resolving the issue of sourcing juvenile Atlantic salmon or smolt for the startup phase of its proposed $250 million project. The company plans to eventually construct a fish hatchery at the shuttered Maine Fair Trade facility. If the project is approved, the salmon will be grown to market size in pens in Frenchman Bay.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

 

Pingree Announces $500K in USDA Funding to Support Growing Aquaculture Industry in Maine

December 10, 2021 — The following was released by The Office of Congresswoman Chellie Pingree:

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) today announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has awarded a $500,000 grant to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) to establish a comprehensive aquaculture workforce training system to support Maine’s rapidly growing aquaculture industry.

“Maine’s aquaculture industry is vital to our state’s economy but needs a skilled workforce to continue to grow and innovate. The Gulf of Maine Research Institute has developed a forward-thinking solution. This comprehensive, collaborative training program will train aquaculturists with in-demand knowledge and skills, helping students to secure good jobs and supporting the workforce needs of this important sector,” said Congresswoman Pingree. “As a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, I have long worked to secure funding for these NIFA grants, which have helped to launch many careers in the nation’s food and agriculture sector. This substantial NIFA award will help ensure Maine’s aquaculture industry reaches its full potential now and in the future.”

The funding will:

  • Help GMRI develop and pilot a Maine Department of Labor Aquaculture (ME DOL) Aquaculture Apprenticeship Program where participants will gain valuable experience, receive mentoring, get trained and tested on defined occupational competencies, and learn to use cutting-edge technology at Maine’s most sophisticated commercial shellfish and sea vegetable farms.
  • Develop and administer a series of stackable, credentialed, aquaculture short courses at Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) that form the basis of an Aquaculture Certificate.
  • Update the Maine Aquaculture Occupational Standards for Shellfish and Sea Vegetables, Recirculating Aquaculture Systems, and Marine Finfish to ensure that aquaculture workforce training remains relevant to Maine’s rapidly evolving and growing industry.
  • Coordinate program development and delivery between SMCC, Washington County Community College, The Mid-Coast School of Technology (K-9 Career Technical Education High School), and ME DOL Apprenticeship to establish matriculation pathways and dual-credit programs that enable fast-tracked degree completion.

The programming developed will have the potential to be expanded to other community colleges in Maine and throughout the Northeast.

In April 2021, Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center in Walpole was awarded $500,000 from NIFA to develop an aquaculture workforce training pilot in partnership with Washington County Community College.

Pingree serves on both the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture and the House Agriculture Committee.

 

As Maine’s climate changes, scallop farming offers optimism

January 3, 2021 — As rapidly warming oceans continue to drive Maine lobster into more remote waters, some in the state’s fishing industry regard sea scallop farming as the prime candidate to help bring added stability to the industry and offset anticipated revenue losses.

But to fully capitalize on the species, renowned for its delicate texture and taste, the industry must solve a handful of nagging problems. Maine’s scallop fishery has been notoriously unstable over the past few decades, culminating in an outright crash in the mid-2000s from which the commercial fishery still hasn’t fully recovered.

Aside from concerns about overfishing, which Maine regulators have addressed through rotating fishery closures, harvesters also must contend with testing for biotoxins found naturally in scallops, which can add substantially to their cost.

But automation technology and farming techniques borrowed from more mature scallop fisheries as far away as Japan are giving some Maine seafood harvesters cause for optimism. They believe the growth potential for sustainable, farm-raised scallops is nearly limitless in Maine, if they can just figure out the right approach and make it affordable.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

4 years later, the 4 large fish farms planned for Maine haven’t started construction

December 27, 2021 — This year will be remembered in Maine, at least in part, as when interest in developing four large-scale fish farms on the state’s eastern coastline continued to intensify.

It also will be remembered by some as yet another year during which — nearly four years since plans for the first proposal were announced — none of the four separate projects began construction.

The projects are at various stages of the permitting process, with some being fully approved and others not yet having any permits. All have shied away from announcing specific timetables for when they hope to start to build.

Nordic Aquafarms

The biggest of the four proposals, and the first to be announced, is a $500 million land-based salmon farm near the Little River in Belfast. Nordic Aquafarms plans to produce more than 72 million pounds of salmon per year at the site.

The project received its final outstanding permit this summer, with local, state and federal authorities all giving the green light to move forward with construction.

But Nordic Aquafarms also has encountered fierce opposition, with critics fighting the company in court with a civil suit over the ownership of a strip of intertidal land that is instrumental to the project. This summer, the city of Belfast got involved by pursuing eminent domain in order to get the company an easement to cross the intertidal zone with its intake and outfall pipes to get to Penobscot Bay.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Washington shellfish aquaculture permitting challenged again

December 22, 2021 — For the second time in four years, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) has taken the federal government to court to keep the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from approving projects in Washington state that expand shellfish aquaculture without considering their environmental impact.

The lawsuit, filed Monday, 19 December in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, by CFS claims the Corps’ policies violate the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other federal laws. It comes after the Corps finalized a new permit in January 2021, during the final days of the Trump administration.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Covid-19 drove down landings revenue 22 percent in 2020

December 21, 2021 — An updated analysis of the covid-19 pandemic’s effect on the U.S. fishing and seafood industry shows an across-the-board 22 percent decline in commercial landings revenue during 2020 compared to the previous five-year average, NMFS experts said.

The previously growing aquaculture sector “continued to struggle despite the incremental re-opening of restaurants beginning in May 2020,” while the recreational sector saw a 17 percent decline in trips during 2020, the NMFS report states.

“Our analysis shows that the covid public health crisis created a turning point for the U.S. and the global seafood industry,” agency officials said in releasing the new report, updating the original analysis from January 2021. “It created new long-term challenges to expanding our sustainable domestic seafood sector.”

Food service sales fell 40 percent in the “first quarter of covid-19,” defined as March through May 2020, relative to average sales in the three preceding quarters, the report states.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

COVID-19 Impacts on U.S. Fishing and Seafood Industries Show Broad Declines in 2020

December 17, 2021 — NOAA Fisheries released an updated report, U.S. Seafood Industry and For-Hire Sector Impacts from COVID-19: 2020 in Perspective. It provides an economic assessment of COVID-19 effects on the U.S. fishing and seafood industry in 2020. This includes analyses of the wild harvest, aquaculture, and the recreational charter/for-hire sectors. Our analysis shows that the COVID public health crisis created a turning point for the U.S. and the global seafood industry. It created new long-term challenges to expanding our sustainable domestic seafood sector. The pandemic also created significant challenges for the U.S. recreational for-hire industry.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

Bill Reboot: The AQUAA Act is back

December 16, 2021 — In October, a trio of senators reintroduced the AQUAA Act, seeking to revise federal oversight and regulation of large-scale offshore aquaculture. Now the act is paired to dance with a House companion, brought to the floor courtesy of Reps. Stephen Palazzo (R-Miss.) and Edward Case (D-Hawaii) on Tuesday, Dec. 14.

The Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture Act was last introduced by Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) shortly after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed NMFS’s lack of jurisdiction over aquaculture leases in the Gulf of Mexico, upholding a 2018 district court ruling.

“Had Congress intended to give [NMFS] the authority to create an entirely new regulatory permitting scheme for aquaculture operations, it would have said more than ‘harvesting,’” wrote U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo in the ruling that favored fishing, environmental and public interest groups who filed the suit against the federal government to fight an expansion of NMFS’ reach into aquaculture.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Study finds aquaculture production vulnerable to climate change

December 16, 2021 — Unchecked global warming could reduce global aquaculture production by as much as 16 percent by 2090, a new study from the University of British Columbia Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries shows.

Marine aquaculture, or mariculture, could double its output by 2050, from a current 30 million metric tons (MT) per year live-weight to 74 million MT, but UBC’s researchers modeled that estimate against climate change scenarios and found climate change to be a more serious threat to the industry than expected.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Major land-based aquaculture projects near beginning of construction in Maine

December 3, 2021 — Three major land-based aquaculture projects – Atlantic salmon farms planned by Nordic Aquafarms and Whole Oceans, and The Kingfish Company’s yellowtail farm – are all set to initiate construction in coming months in the U.S. state of Maine.

Fredrikstad, Norway-based Nordic Aquafarms won a key legal victory in November 2021 and, in August 2021, it obtained the last permit it needed to begin construction on its land-based salmon farm in Belfast, Maine, U.S.A., where it hopes to grow up to 33,000 metric tons (MT) of salmon annually.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource