Saving Seafood

MARYLAND: Land-based salmon farm proposed for Chesapeake’s Eastern Shore

September 3, 2020 — The Chesapeake Bay is known to many for the seafood it produces: blue crabs, oysters and striped bass.

In a few years, though, the Bay region could become a major producer of an even more popular seafood that doesn’t come from the Chesapeake. A Norwegian company, AquaCon, has unveiled plans to raise salmon on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

AquaCon executives intend to build a $300 million indoor salmon farm on the outskirts of Federalsburg in Caroline County. By 2024, they aim to harvest 3 million fish a year weighing 14,000 metric tons — an amount on par with Maryland’s annual commercial crab catch.

If that goes as planned, the company expects to build two more land-based salmon farms on the Shore over the next six or seven years, bringing production up to 42,000 tons annually. That’s more than the Baywide landings of any fish or shellfish, except for menhaden, and more valuable commercially.

AquaCon’s announcement comes amid a rush by mostly European aquaculture companies to supply Americans with farmed salmon. Another Norwegian company is preparing for its first full harvest later this year from a facility south of Miami, and plans have been announced to build big indoor salmon farms in Maine and on the West Coast. Two small U.S.-based salmon operations in the Midwest also are moving to expand production.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

MAINE: Portland Fish Exchange looks to shore up its future with aquaculture

September 3, 2020 — The Portland Fish Exchange is launching a new oyster sorting and bagging operation inside its cold, cavernous auction warehouse in hopes of growing the state’s aquaculture economy and diversifying a business plan that’s taken a beating since local ground fish landings collapsed.

On Wednesday, the Exchange received the first of what it hopes will be many oyster deliveries. Two employees measured, sorted, bagged and tagged five 100-count bags of Eastern oysters harvested by Running Tide, a two-year-old aquaculture company that operates a hatchery in Harpswell and grows oysters, clams and scallops at three coastal Maine locations.

“Ground fish landings have been going down, down, down for years,” said Bert Jongerden, the longtime general manager of the exchange. “The numbers told us we had to find something else. So we thought, let’s do for aquaculture what we’ve done for ground fishermen. Give them the shoreside support they need to focus on harvesting instead of chasing down sales.”

The pearly white shelled oysters, which measure from 2 ½ inches to 5 inches from hinge to outer shell fan, have rounded edges created from being tumbled, or stirred, to avoid being chipped when shucked, and deep pockets that hint at the plump meat inside. This first harvest is bound for The Shop, a raw bar on Washington Avenue, to be served up on Friday.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Deep-water fish farming in the Gulf of Mexico: Who benefits?

September 1, 2020 — The long, choppy quest to open up the Gulf of Mexico to large-scale fish farming began, in a way, some 30 years ago on the black pearl diving docks of Micronesia. That’s where the Australian businessman Neil Anthony Sims first met the American marine biologist Kevan Main.

Their paths diverged – his to Hawaii to develop deep-water fish farming, hers to Florida to head the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota – but the two remain key figures for a project that could transform not just the American dinner table, but also the economies of fishing ports from Alaska to Florida.

Velella Epsilon – the first fish farm in federal waters off the contiguous United States – would operate in the Gulf of Mexico, about 40 miles from Florida’s coast. Globe-shaped pens would hold fingerling almaco jack, a member of the amberjack genus, that would grow into 4-pound market fish within a year. If scaled with corporate investment, the project could eventually yield 64 million pounds of sushi-quality meat a year, enough to dramatically reshape the world’s seafood trade.

Read the full story at The Christian Science Monitor

What It Takes to Feed Billions of Farmed Fish Every Day

August 31, 2020 — The air inside the greenhouse is abuzz with flying insects. They rise and fall above endless trays teeming with their larvae. Here at Enterra Feed Corporation’s research facility near Vancouver, British Columbia, the farmers don’t grow flowers or vegetables. Instead, they farm soft-bodied, legless consumers of decomposing matter. My guide, Andrew Vickerson, prefers that you not call them maggots.

Call them what you will; they appear to be little more than a mouth and trailing rolls of fat. Once they’re past the larval (or grub) stage, during which they can grow as long as a paper clip, they metamorphose into winged adults. With their bulbous eyes, wasplike antennae, and loud buzz, the adults seem intimidating—but, lacking mouths, they can’t bite or eat. They live only to mate and lay eggs for the next generation. Their entire life span is about 35 days. They are best eaten while still young.

Vickerson waves the air in front of his face, chasing away escapees of the nearby breeding pens. He was the first employee hired by Enterra back in 2009, when he was 25. Environmentalist David Suzuki and Enterra CEO Brad Marchant (recently retired) had founded the company on a hunch. Insects play an important role in the diet of fish in the wild, they reasoned. Why not of farmed fish? While Enterra considered using other insects early on, all the research kept pointing back to a single species: Hermetia illucens, the black soldier fly.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

Trump Eyes Aquaculture Boom, but Environmentalists Dig In

August 31, 2020 — President Donald Trump wants to dramatically expand aquaculture production in the United States, but a coalition of environmentalists believes his plan would be bad for the oceans, unnecessary for food security and difficult to implement.

Trump’s bid to grow fish farming is designed to address the so-called “seafood deficit,” which refers to the fact that nine-tenths of the seafood Americans eat comes from overseas. The seafood trade gap with other countries approached $17 billion in 2017, according to one federal government report.

The president issued an executive order in May that promised broad changes in how the U.S. regulates fish farming. It included provisions to expedite the development of offshore aquaculture in deep federal waters. That sector of the industry has yet to emerge in the U.S., where most aquaculture takes place near shore where farmers grow salmon, oysters and other popular seafood items.

The Trump administration and the aquaculture industry said the order, which is being implemented now, represents common sense steps to ease the burden of rules on fish farmers. But environmental groups said it threatens to increase pollution and over-development in the ocean at a time when many consumers aren’t buying seafood.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Northwest Aquaculture Alliance elects new officers

August 27, 2020 — The Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA) has announced the election of two new officers who will serve in leadership roles for the organization.

Cooke Aquaculture Pacific General Manager Jim Parsons has been elected to the role of president of the NWAA, and Jamestown Seafood CEO Kurt Grinnell has been elected to serve as the vice president. The NWAA is an advocate for aquaculture in the northwest region of the United States, and parts of Canada.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

As the world’s population grows, researchers say the ocean and seafood have big roles to play

August 27, 2020 — Seafood production could see as much as a 75 percent leap over the next three decades if certain policy reforms and technological improvements are put in place, according to research conducted by Oregon State University (OSU) in collaboration with a bevy of international scientists.

By 2050, the earth’s human population is expected to reach 9.8 billion, an increase of two billion people over the current global tally. Researchers, who published their latest findings in Nature, believe that seafood has the potential to feed the growing world over the next 30 years sustainably – if certain conditions are applied.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NMFS plans for first federal offshore aquaculture zones

August 26, 2020 — Unfazed by a recent setback in federal appeals court, the National Marine Fisheries Service is moving ahead on planning “aquaculture opportunity areas” in federal waters off southern California and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Still in the very early stages, the planning process will evaluate the potential in those regions and map out what NMFS planners envision as clusters of three to five fish farming operations. The gulf and Pacific coast areas were selected “based on the already available spatial analysis data and current industry interest in developing sustainable aquaculture operations in the region,” according to agency officials.

“Naming these areas is a big step forward,” said NMFS administrator Chris Oliver in announcing the move toward implementing the Trump administration’s May executive order on promoting U.S. seafood industry development. “The creation of Aquaculture Opportunity Areas will foster the U.S. aquaculture industry as a needed complement to our wild capture fisheries. This type of proactive work creates opportunities for aquaculture farmers and maintains our commitment to environmental stewardship.”

The long-range plan calls for 10 development areas around the coasts that would support finfish, shellfish, seaweed and combinations of those maricultures. NMFS officials say they will “use scientific analysis and public engagement

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Cape businesses partner with ‘MassGrown’ outlet

August 25, 2020 — A new, state-run online marketplace, called MassGrown Exchange, launched last week, offering a platform where food suppliers such as farmers and fishermen can advertise wholesale products they have for sale with a specific timeframe for how long the listing should last.

So far, two Cape-based businesses are listed as participants — Massachusetts Aquaculture Association, in West Chatham, and Midnight Our, a fishing boat operating out of Harwich Port.

State officials touted the site, at Massnrc.org, as an important resource during the COVID-19 pandemic to help generate business amid a massive economic downturn and a platform that will also carry long-term benefits.

“A key aspect of our work in this area is not just working through this challenge, but really building a system that, over the long-term, will have resilience to withstand whatever challenges we face in the future and to ensure one of the best resources that we have — the local abundance of food that we produce and grow and catch here in Massachusetts — helps us to really support our residents and support our economy,” Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides said during a virtual event unveiling the platform.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

Feds select Gulf of Mexico as potential zone for fish farming

August 21, 2020 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday chose the Gulf of Mexico as one of two places where it will look to grow offshore fish farming.

The gulf joins Southern California in becoming a region for “Aquaculture Opportunity Areas,” the first two in the United States. President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this year outlining the concept as a way of boosting the country’s seafood industry and reducing its reliance on imported fish. The selection covers federal waters but does not identify more specific locations.

“The creation of Aquaculture Opportunity Areas will foster the U.S. aquaculture industry as a needed complement to our wild capture fisheries,” said Chris Oliver, the assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries, in a statement. “This type of proactive work creates opportunities for aquaculture farmers and maintains our commitment to environmental stewardship.”

Read the full story at the Tampa Bay Times