Saving Seafood

Video Research Investigates Effects of Shellfish Farming on West Coast Nearshore Habitat

October 2, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The underwater video scene is full of life. A school of sinewy fish darts across the screen while a crab rummages along the seafloor. A flatfish, camouflaged like the sandy bottom, doesn’t seem to mind when the crab crawls over its back to approach an oyster.

Scientists from NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center are collecting this video and more like it. They want to assess how marine life uses, and may even benefit from, habitat in and around farms growing oysters and other shellfish. They are teaming up with Microsoft to use computers and artificial intelligence to scan hours of video within seconds for different species of interest.

This particular video reveals the underwater landscape of Hama Hama shellfish farm in Hood Canal, Washington, one of many partners assisting with the study. Other local shellfish growers and the Pacific Shellfish Institute are also taking part.

“We collected the video as one way to assess how fish and invertebrates use shellfish aquaculture habitats compared to areas of the nearshore that don’t have aquaculture,” said Beth Sanderson, a Northwest Fisheries Science Center research scientist. Researchers collected the video over the past several years to assess the way species use, and feed in, different habitat types.

Shellfish farming is one of the most valuable parts of the Northwest aquaculture industry. It generated close to $100 million annually for the regional economy and provides close to 1,500 jobs prior to the pandemic. Shellfish farms occupy more than 25,000 acres in the Northwest. Researchers and managers want to understand how farming practices affect marine life in the shallow and highly productive nearshore waters where oysters and other shellfish grow.

“We’ve seen basically all of the fish you’d expect in the nearshore—herring and other forage fish, varieties of perch and sculpin, juvenile salmon, along with diving ducks, harbor seals and more,” Sanderson said. “There’s an amazing variety of life in the shallows of the Pacific Northwest, and we are seeing for the first time how many of these species use habitats within and near shellfish farms.”

Read the full release here

Offshore aquaculture project hoping to make history gains critical EPA permit

October 2, 2020 — There are currently no commercial finfish operations in US federal waters, which is defined as ocean water spanning between 12 and 200 miles offshore.

This week, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for the Velella Epsilon aquaculture project, another big step in making American offshore aquaculture a reality.

The Velella Epsilon offshore demonstration farm is a netpen aquaculture facility set to be located approximately 45 miles southwest of Sarasota, Florida, slated to raise a single batch, or cohort, of 20,000 kampachi (Seriola rivoliana).

Read the full story at IntraFish

Aquaculture Supports a Sustainable Earth

October 1, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The United Nations maintains 17 Sustainable Development Goals that serve as a framework for international cooperation to help people and the planet thrive.

A recent study from the UN shows that aquaculture can improve food security and nutrition by increasing the amount of seafood available for people to eat. If done correctly, aquaculture increases food production, boosts economic growth in coastal and rural areas, and can help keep waterways clean.

Explore how aquaculture fits into the UN’s sustainability goals:

1. Shellfish Beds Help Restore Our Waterways

Shellfish such as oysters, clams, and mussels are not just a beach barbecue staple; they serve an important role in waterways. However, in some areas these shellfish have been largely lost from coastal ecosystems. Restoring and farming shellfish beds allows these bivalves to clean the water as they filter feed, serve as habitats for smaller organisms, and can even help prevent shoreline erosion. Preserving ecosystems, safeguarding biodiversity, and reversing land degradation are significant components of sustainable aquaculture.

Read the full release here

Floating fish farms in Gulf of Mexico could get green light with Congressional bill

September 30, 2020 — A new bill in Congress would open the Gulf of Mexico and other federal waters to offshore fish farming, a controversial idea backed by President Donald Trump’s administration but opposed by environmental groups and elements of the seafood industry that depend on wild fisheries.

Introduced Thursday and sponsored by U.S. Senators Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, Marco Rubio, R-Florida, and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, the Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture (AQUAA) Act aims to accomplish what a recent federal court decision said was impossible unless Congress intervened.

Last month, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans blocked federal rules that would have allowed offshore fish farming for the first time in the Gulf, considered potentially a prime area for raising high-value fish in large floating pens. The court said federal regulators lack the authority to “create an entire industry” not mentioned in the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary law governing fisheries since 1976.

Read the full story at NOLA.com

Atlantic Sapphire completes first commercial harvest of land-based farmed salmon at US facility, marking a major milestone

September 29, 2020 — Atlantic Sapphire completed the first commercial harvest of salmon from its land-based facility in Miami on Monday, marking a major milestone for the company and the large land-based salmon industry.

Atlantic Sapphire Interim CFO Karl-Oystein Oyehauge told IntraFish the harvest “is a proud moment for the Sapphire team.”

The company said it will now be supplying weekly volumes to customers such as Giant Eagle, H-E-B, New Seasons Market, Publix, Safeway, Sobey’s, Sprouts Farmers Market and Wegmans.

The Chef’s Warehouse, a Connecticut-based gourmet food and restaurant supplier, will be among the first buyers to receive the product, Atlantic Sapphire said.

Read the full story at IntraFish

Senate bill would establish U.S. offshore aquaculture rules

September 28, 2020 — A bill newly introduced in the Senate would establish a federal regulatory system for offshore aquaculture, opening a pathway to large-scale fishing farming in the U.S. exclusive economic zone.

Sponsored by Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), bill S-4723 would clear the way for the Department of Commerce in its drive to create new aquaculture zones – an effort so far stymied by the federal courts.

In an Aug. 3 decision, the Fifth Court of Appeals upheld a 2018 lower court ruling that the Department of Commerce and NMFS lack legal authority to issue permits for aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico.

In its 2-1 decision, the appeals panel found in favor of critics who argued the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management grants the agency no power to permit fish farming in federal waters.

“If anyone is to expand the 40-year-old Magnuson-Stevens Act to reach aquaculture for the first time, it must be Congress,” according to the court’s opinion.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

The Top 25: Seafood Sustainability & Conservation

September 25, 2020 — There’s no way around it – 2020 so far has been a year wrought with difficult news and stark changes. A global pandemic has kept most of us apart. It’s made the future harder to imagine. Nevertheless, much of the seafood industry persists in its efforts to stay the course, feeding communities in a time of great need. We hope this year’s Top 25 list similarly nourishes your news feed with something good.

From 1999 to 2018, the editorial team of SeafoodSource and its previous incarnation, SeaFood Business magazine, worked tirelessly to produce a list of the leading North American seafood suppliers based on reported sales figures. Last year, we revamped our process, bringing you a new type of compilation celebrating the Top 25 seafood product innovations that have transformed the North American industry. In 2020, we have once again reshuffled the deck.

Cooke Inc.

It all began in 1985 with one family, one farm, and 5,000 salmon. Thirty-five years later, vertically-integrated corporation Cooke Aquaculture, headquartered in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, Canada, and a collective of other Cooke family companies together comprise one of the world’s largest seafood enterprises.

A business of such magnitude approaches sustainable development in a variety of ways. For instance, when it comes to certifying its True North Seafood products, Cooke has earned vetting from an array of third-party providers of some of the industry’s most stringent standards, including: the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP), BRCGS Global Standards, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM), the International Featured Standards (IFS), Soil Association Organic, Kosher, GLOBAL G.A.P. Aquaculture Standard, Label Rouge, Friend of the Sea, Crianza de Nuestros Mares (“Breeding from our seas”), ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, Halal, and Ocean Wise.

Read the full list and descriptions at Seafood Source

Nine Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Aquaculture

September 24, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

1. It’s Not Just for Fish

Many aquaculture producers in the United States don’t raise fish, despite the industry’s popular image of fish farming. In fact, oysters were the most commercially valuable domestic farmed marine species in recent years. In 2017, oyster farmers harvested 36 million pounds valued at $186 million. And clams ranked number two in production value in 2012–2017. Other top U.S. marine aquaculture products include mussels, shrimps, and salmon.

In recent years, a growing number of entrepreneurs are also turning to kelp to supply sustainable seafood and coastal jobs.

2. More than Half of the World’s Seafood Comes from Aquaculture

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing forms of food production. Global marine and freshwater aquaculture production rose by 527 percent between 1990 and 2018 according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Although most of that production happens outside the United States, farmed products still make up a large portion of American’s seafood diet. We import more than 85 percent of our seafood, and half of that is from aquaculture. In contrast, U.S. marine and freshwater aquaculture accounts for only a small portion of our domestic seafood supply.

Read the full release here

Celebrating Aquaculture Week 2020

September 24, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

This week NOAA Fisheries and our partners will celebrate National Aquaculture Week. NOAA Fisheries and its predecessor agencies have been involved in aquaculture for more than 125 years, pioneering fish culture methods and stock enhancement techniques to replenish wild stocks. Many culture, hatching, and rearing techniques currently used by the industry worldwide were developed in NOAA labs, such as the Milford, Connecticut lab for mollusks; the Manchester, Washington, lab for salmon; and the Galveston, Texas lab for shrimp.

Marine aquaculture is an important part of the agency’s strategy for economic and environmental resiliency in coastal communities and supporting healthy oceans. In 2017, US aquaculture producers raised 32 million pounds of salmon, 36 million pounds of oysters, and 9 million pounds of clams along the nation’s coast. In total, farm-raised seafood accounted for 21 percent of the U.S. seafood production by value in 2017. Around the nation in many fishing and coastal communities, aquaculture is creating important economic opportunities and year-round employment.

Read the full release here

IFFO’s Johannessen: Use of marine ingredients in aquafeed “will not decline in the foreseeable future”

September 23, 2020 — IFFO, the international trade body that represents the marine ingredients industry, sees a promising future for itself, even with the rise of alternative, plant- and algae-based aquafeed ingredients.

As part of a new campaign to tell its story to a wider audience, the organization recently relaunched its website and initiated a social media campaign, according to IFFO Director General Petter Johannessen.

Read the full story at Seafood Source