Saving Seafood

With plants on top and fish underneath, can aquaponics work in N.H.?

October 23, 2018 — Years ago I helped a friend of a friend with a backyard aquaponics system – in which plants are grown in water rather than soil and fish live in the water. I was entranced.

It seemed almost magical, with the poop from the fish feeding the plants to create both vegetables and animal protein in one small space. I figured such systems would soon start replacing gardens among the geekier subsets of the back-to-the-land crowd, becoming a real part of the local food movement.

Nope.

I’m not sure what happened to the system I saw, but I know that aquaponics has never caught on even though the related field of aquaculture, which grows fish or shellfish without the plants, is doing pretty well.

A new project at UNH wants to change that, and maybe turn this fish-and-veggies idea into something that can support a real business in New England.

How? They’re going to science the heck out of it.

“I’m here as a fancy plumber,” said Todd Guerdat, an assistant professor of agricultural engineering, who is leading the project at UNH’s Kingman Research Farm in Madbury. He said seven graduate students are involved in the research at the moment: “They’re the facility managers, they understand the biology, physics, engineering, physiology, and all the other factors that go into it.”

In New Hampshire as in many places, he said, aquaponics systems are built on rules of thumb, at best. If a system fails or if costs go through the roof, it’s not clear why because there’s limited understanding of what’s actually going on with inputs like fish food and outputs like the harvest and the waste.

“The tough part of aquaponics, as opposed to poultry or dairy farming, is that we don’t have nutrient balances established,” Guerdat said. “We don’t have a functional model that says: this is how you can do it … and make money. Send your kids to college.”

Read the full story at the Concord Monitor

Omega Protein disputes article ‘attacking’ menhaden fishing

October 22, 2018 — US menhaden harvester Omega Protein has disputed the accuracy of recent statements made by a conservation group that wants to end commercial fishing of the species.

Paul Eidman of the group Menhaden Defenders recently wrote an essay, “Trouble comes to town”,  describing a fishing trip that an Omega vessel recently took to New Jersey and New York waters. That trip, Eidman asserted, harvested menhaden that otherwise would have been consumed by whales.

“This event sparked an outpouring of renewed interest in menhaden, and now local folks want to stop the harvest completely since Omega Protein is removing all of the whales’ food from the area,” Eidman wrote.

The company wrote in a Oct. 18 press release that all of its fishing, including the recent trip up north from its usual more southerly fishing grounds, complies with state and federal regulations and that Eidman’s piece got “key facts wrong”.

A limit on menhaden fishing was established by the Atlantic States Fisheries Management Council and Omega is in compliance with this limit, the company, which is owned by Canada’s Cooke Aquaculture, said.

“This limit ensures that the menhaden fishery is not taking a harmful amount of fish from whales’ diets. Last year, an analysis  using data from the 2017 Atlantic menhaden stock assessment found that current management leaves 92% of menhaden in the water to fulfill their role in the ecosystem,” the company said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

UMaine team gets help in battle with salmon-ruining lice

October 19, 2018 — The University of Maine is getting a boost from the federal government for a pair of aquaculture projects, one of which addresses a pest problem in worldwide salmon farming.

The money is coming from NOAA Sea Grant, which supports fishery and coastal projects. The university says three researchers at its Aquaculture Research Institute will receive more than $700,000 to work on new approaches to address sea lice in salmon operations.

The lice are a major problem for salmon farms in Maine, Canada and around the world as they render the fish impossible to sell. The industry is struggling with resistance to pesticides used to control the lice.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Times

Omega Protein close to netting MSC for menhaden

October 18, 2018 — The menhaden fisheries on both the Atlantic coast of the United States and in the Gulf of Mexico — North America’s largest source of fish for meal and oil – are within months of gaining Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification, and Cooke Aquaculture is in a prime position to take advantage.

The Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, Canada-based seafood giant recently acquired Omega Protein, the largest harvester of menhaden in both fisheries, and could, if it wanted, begin promoting at least some of its farmed salmon products as being fed a diet made from MSC-certified ingredients.

But it doesn’t, and it won’t.

“At this time, this is not our intention as we use other marine ingredients that come from various sustainably managed fisheries,” Joel Richardson, a Cooke spokesperson, told Undercurrent News in an email.

The Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus) fishery — which landed 164,880 metric tons of fish in 2016, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data — has received the required set of scores from independent MSC auditor SAI Global and all of the necessary signatures by state authorities and others, Ben Landry, Omega Protein’s public affairs specialist, told Undercurrent News this week.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ASC-certified fish farms testing out Fair Trade standards

October 17, 2018 — Select fish farms certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) will soon be piloting Fair Trade USA’s requirements, thanks to a recent memorandum of understanding signed by the certification bodies.

The collaboration, announced 9 October, will see Fair Trade USA’s model of “responsible business and conscious consumption” implemented by certain ASC-certified fish farms. The pilot – being carried out in the framework of ASC’s new Improver Program – will allow the certifiers to determine if Fair Trade’s program, which enables sustainable livelihoods for fishermen around the world while empowering them to improve their communities via the Community Development Fund, can act as a ladder toward ASC certification.

“The Capture Fisheries Standard for wild fisheries has been the cornerstone of the Fair Trade seafood program since its inception in 2014, and now thousands of fishermen and workers are reaping its benefits,” said Julie Kuchepatov, seafood director at Fair Trade USA. “We look forward to working with ASC to bring the benefits of Fair Trade to fish farmers and workers and increase the environmental and social impact of our respective programs.”

“We are excited to bring the expertise of both organizations together in service of our shared goal to further improve the social and environmental performance of the aquaculture industry,” added Roy van Daatselaar, producer support manager at ASC.

ASC’s Improver Program, which was launched at the beginning of October, is aimed at helping seafood farmers not yet ready to achieve certification with improving their practices and mitigating their social and environmental impacts. The program has already seen ASC team up with the Vietnamese Directorate of Fisheries (D-Fish) and WWF Vietnam to provide guidance documents geared at helping VietGAP-certified farmers to achieve ASC certification. This new arrangement with Fair Trade USA signals the program’s ongoing expansion and will benefit producers with a more comprehensive approach to certification, according to Daatselaar.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fishmeal industry optimistic on upcoming Peruvian anchovy season

October 15, 2018 — Fishmeal and fish oil industry sources are optimistic about the upcoming Peruvian anchovy fishing season, which might start earlier than expected, in mid-November.

Peru’s ministry of production (Produce) is expected to announce the start of the fishing season around the end of October, taking into account the outcome of the maritime institute’s ongoing evaluation.

“Sea conditions are optimal and good reproduction has already started on the acoustic cruise that will end at the end of October,” said Humberto Speziani, IFFO board member and former president of IFFO and of the Peruvian National Fisheries Society (SNP).

Although the evaluation hasn’t yet been completed, it seems that biomass in the water is abundant, which could lead to a quota of 2 million-2.5m metric tons, according to sources. Despite rumors that the quota could be as high as 2.5m metric tons, 2m-2.2m metric tons is more in line with the historical average, one source pointed out.

“2m-2.5m metric tons is quite a reliable assumption of quota,” Jean-Francois Mittaine, an analyst with 30 years experience in the sector, told Undercurrent News, adding that fishmeal and fish oil prices were currently “quite stable”.

Super prime fishmeal is currently priced at around $1,630-1,650 per metric ton, while fish oil is at around $1,350/t, according to industry sources in Peru. Meanwhile, prices in China were slightly falling, driven by expectations of a good upcoming Peruvian season, according to sources.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Maine aquaculture projects dredge memories of polluted waterways

October 10, 2018 — At a recent hearing in Kittery, so many people showed up to weigh in on the proposed expansion of an oyster-growing operation in a local creek, Department of Marine Resources hearing officer Amanda Ellis had to make a choice.

“Based on the number that we’re seeing we’ve made the decision to postpone the hearing,” she said.

But opponents such as Mike Dowling were still plenty willing to talk.

“I have many concerns, there’s a whole group of us, introducing over 2,500 objects suspended or floating into the creek creates a pinch point, and everyone uses that little sandy beach to go swimming,” he said.

Such complaints do arise with aquaculture enterprises, with neighbors — sometimes including fishermen — worrying about water access, environmental effects and property values. Up the coast in Maquoit Bay, near Brunswick, a proposed 40-acre shellfish farm is meeting some stiff resistance.

And then there’s Belfast, where a proposal to site what would be one of the world’s largest indoor salmon farms is stirring talk of the darker days, when the city was dominated by chicken processors.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Teacher switches to oyster farming

October 4, 2018 — Back when Lauren Gray was working for Commercial Fisheries News, she wrote a couple of feature stories about aquaculture.

“I thought it was really neat,” she said. “But at the time I didn’t have any idea I was going to become an oyster farmer.”

A few years later, when she got a job teaching science, reading and writing at the Ashley Bryan School, she and her husband Josh moved to Islesford. And soon after that she began working in the summers as a sternman for lobstermen Ricky Alley and Danny Fernald.

“I just loved being on the water all the time,” she said. “So, I started thinking about what I could do to make that a life.”

She decided that operating an oyster farm was the answer. She started it three years ago on eight 400-square-foot Limited Purpose Aquaculture (LPA) sites in The Pool, which is nearly surrounded by Great Cranberry Island. She leases the sites from the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

After teaching for five years, Gray left that job when school ended in June to devote herself full time to the business of raising oysters. She sold her first oysters — an order for 24 dozen — the weekend before Labor Day.

“That was pretty exciting,” she said.

“It took them three years to grow to cocktail size, about two-and-a-half to three inches. I’ve just been selling them to people locally. I have a little sign-up sheet at the Great Cranberry General Store.”

Gray said she plans to work on obtaining a license that will allow her to sell her oysters commercially.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Defenders of endangered right whales pursue limits on aquaculture

October 4, 2018 — Right whale defenders are now taking aim at aquaculture as they try to protect the highly endangered species from deadly fishing gear entanglements.

Advocates usually focus on the lobster industry, which is estimated to account for a million surface-to-seabed trap lines in East Coast waters, when talking about entanglement risks faced by the North Atlantic right whale, whose numbers have now dwindled to fewer than 450. But animal rights groups asking for federal intervention to avoid extinction of the whales are now asking regulators to reduce the threat of aquaculture entanglement, too.

Researchers from Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a U.K.-based nonprofit that advocates for marine animals, want regulators to reduce surface-to-seabed lines in all Gulf of Maine fisheries, not just lobstering. They name aquaculture and gill net as rope-based fishing methods that are known to entrap, injure and kill both humpback and right whales. They say it’s not fair for regulators, who are meeting next week, to seek rope reduction from lobstermen while issuing permits for other fisheries that use similar rope.

The proposal does not say how to implement this aquaculture reduction, or if it should apply to in-shore, near-shore or offshore operations. Maine has a small but rapidly growing aquaculture industry, accounting for about a quarter of Maine’s documented $6.5 million-a-year shellfish harvest. But consultants believe the value of Maine’s farmed oysters, mussels and scallops will more than quadruple in value over 15 years.

A market analysis prepared for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in 2016 predicts Maine’s shellfish aquaculture industry will grow to $30 million by 2030.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Why Maine lobstermen are looking to farmed scallops to stay afloat

October 3, 2018 — Marsden Brewer is a third-generation Maine fishermen who docks in Stonington.

“I’ve been involved in all the fisheries over my lifetime,” he said.

These days it’s mostly lobster, but he has fished cod and shrimp, and carted urchin to market. These once-vibrant species are now mostly off-limits after being overfished and weakened by climate change.

“I’ve seen the collapse and been part of the collapse of most of the fisheries. Not intentionally, but just the way it was set up to work, it wasn’t sustainable, and this project here is looking at sustainability in a fishery,” he said.

The project Brewer refers to is a 20-year effort to diversify his business by developing a profitable scallop farm. He used to scatter baby scallops in the bay, then trawl up the adults a couple years later. Success was limited though.

Now, from his 38-foot lobster boat moored more than a mile offshore, he’s experimenting with methods from Japan, where scallop farming is a long tradition.

Brewer, his son Bobby and Dana Morse, a marine extension agent with the University of Maine, winch up from the depths a long rope strung with 12-foot dark mesh bags. The collapsible bags are partitioned by horizontal shelves, giving them the look of giant Japanese paper lanterns. Inside, each level holds 20 or so squirting scallops.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News