Saving Seafood

American Aquafarms appeals termination of its lease application for a controversial salmon farm

May 27, 2022 — A company that wants to build an industrial-scale salmon farm near Acadia National Park in Frenchman Bay is appealing the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ termination of its lease application.

American Aquafarms, which is backed by a Norwegian investor group, has proposed raising 60 million pounds of salmon in floating net pans on two 60-acre sites off Gouldsboro.

Earlier this year DMR determined its lease application did not properly document how eggs used in the first years of operation would be safe for the environment and for wild salmon.

“Filing an appeal we hope will keep the permit application alive. We did this as a last resort. We are trying very much trying to work within the process, we thought we met all the requirements,” said company spokesman Thomas Brennan.

Read the full story at Maine Public Radio

Maine elver fishing industry had one of its most successful seasons ever

May 10, 2022 — Maine’s baby eel fishing industry is wrapping up one of the most successful seasons in its history.

Maine is the only state in the country with a significant fishery for baby eels, which are also called elvers. The elvers are sold to Asian aquaculture companies that raise them to maturity for use as food.

Fishermen have just about tapped out the season’s quota of about 9,300 pounds of eels, state regulators said. The eels were worth nearly $20 million at the docks, with a per-pound price of $2,162, regulators said Monday.

The per-pound price was the third highest in state history, and the total value was at least the fifth highest, state records show.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

 

Chile mulling moratorium on salmon-industry expansion, operation in protected areas

May 9, 2022 — Chile President Gabriel Boric is reportedly considering a moratorium on the farmed salmon sector that would halt its expansion in the country.

The 36-year-old Boric, the youngest president in Chile’s history, was elected in December 2021 and took office in March 2022. Previously, as a member of Chile’s congress, he questioned the environmental sustainability of the country’s USD 5.2 billion (EUR 4.6 billion) salmon-farming industry. Boric hails from Chile’s southernmost region of Magallanes, where the salmon-farming  sector has been expanding its reach.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Groups question aquaculture “roadmap”

May 5, 2022 — A group of scientists, students and organizations earlier this spring wrote a letter to the director of the Maine Sea Grant program expressing concern about a recently released 10-year plan for the state’s growing aquaculture industry.

The Maine Aquaculture Roadmap 2022-2032 was produced by the Maine Aquaculture Hub, a network founded by five organizations: Maine Sea Grant, the Maine Aquaculture Association, the Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center, Coastal Enterprises Inc. and the University of Maine Aquaculture Research Institute. Prior to the report’s release, the writers held a series of focus groups to gather input from interested parties, including aquaculturists, fishermen, government agencies, academics, environmental groups, nonprofits and others.

But critics, in a letter to Gayle Zydlewski, director of Maine Sea Grant, voiced concerns regarding “the framing; timing; representativeness of participants; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and limited focus on education.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

 

Brian Perkins leading GAA’s transition into GSA

May 3, 2022 — On 20 April, 2021, the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) announced it was transitioning into the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA).

A year into the change, the organization selected Brian Perkins – who has more than four decades of experience in the seafood industry – as its new CEO to lead the transition. Perkins replaced former CEO Wally Stevens on 1 January. Perkins served as the organization’s chief operating officer prior to his new role, and joined the organization after a six-year role at the Marine Stewardship Council.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

MAINE: American Aquafarms project terminated

April 28, 2022 — American Aquafarms’ plan to raise 66 million Atlantic salmon in Frenchman Bay seems to be dead in the water. But the broad citizens’ coalition, which swelled to include all seven Frenchman Bay towns, the Downeast lobster fishery, Acadia National Park, MDI Biological Laboratory and several land trusts, has kept a steady spotlight trained on the issue for a year and is very much alive. 

In fact, Frenchman Bay United is prepared to challenge industrial-scale fish farming in Maine coastal waters in light of the departments of Marine Resources and Environmental Protection’s decisions late last week to terminate the Norwegian-backed company’s project that would have involved discharging 4.1 billion gallons of diluted wastewater into the 14-mile bay.  

For over a year Frenchman Bay United, a coast-wide coalition of four groups, has led an aggressive public campaign to oppose American Aquafarms’ proposed operation to farm salmon at 15-pen sites off Bald Rock Ledge and Long Porcupine Island. Its members offered scientific data suggesting the farm’s discharged wastewater would largely remain rather than exit Frenchman Bay and potentially harm fragile marine plants, ecosystems and the lobster, shrimp and scallop fisheries. They staged a 125-boat flotilla of lobster-fishing boats, kayakers and sailors last August in Frenchman Bay as a form of protest and other events to draw attention to the controversial project first proposed in mid-fall of 2020. 

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Petter Johannessen Q&A: IFFO’s director general on developing the feed ingredients landscape

April 27, 2022 — The aquaculture feed sector is seeing the development of new inputs with the potential to improve the sustainability and availability of its product. While these new innovations can contribute to meeting the needs of a growing population, the buzz around such opportunities overshadows the importance of – and innovation in – traditional inputs like fishmeal, which still holds the greatest potential to efficiently deliver a nutrient-rich, sustainable feed to the aquaculture marketplace.

Petter Martin Johannessen joined IFFO, the international trade body that represents the marine ingredients industry, in 2018 as director general. He will be a featured speaker for the Seafood Expo Global conference session “Beyond the buzz: Developing a healthy, sustainable feed,” taking place on 28 April from 10:30 – 11:30. Here, Johannessen shares his thoughts on what the future holds for marine ingredients.

SeafoodSource: What role do marine ingredients play in the market now, and what role do you see the industry playing in the future?

Johannessen: The role of marine ingredients in supporting the growth of aquaculture is well known for being the foundational ingredients that underpinned the development of the sector worldwide. Still today, more than 70 percent of fishmeal and fish oil production are used by aquaculture because of an unmatched combination of properties: nutritional profile (long chain omega-3s, protein, vitamins and minerals), palatability, digestibility, volumes (approximately 5 million metric tons [MT] of fishmeal and 1 million MT of fish oil are produced each year), and prices.

Based on the United Nations’ FAO estimates, aquaculture production could more than double and reach 140 million MT by 2050. With more and more feed ingredients required to support this growth, marine ingredients are increasingly used at strategic stages of the production cycle, where critical nutrients are indispensable. Increasing marine ingredient production into the future is expected through the better use of fishery and aquaculture by-products, which already make up one third of marine raw materials used to produce fishmeal and fish oil.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Aquaculture proponents fly in to Washington DC to push for AQUAA Act

April 27, 2022 — Proponents of expanding America’s aquaculture industry began a three-day meeting with lawmakers and their aides in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, 26 April, in hopes of drumming up more support for a bill to create more opportunities for offshore fish farms.

The fly-in sponsored by industry coalition group Stronger America Through Seafood is the first since the COVID-19 pandemic began more than two years ago. The event is drawing representatives from a wide array of companies, including restaurant chain Red Lobster and animal feed producer Cargill.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

AquaBounty salmon eggs cited as reason for Maine’s rejection of American Aquafarms permit

April 22, 2022 — The Department of Marine Resources (DMR) in the U.S. state of Maine rejected American Aquafarms permit application for a closed-net salmon farm specifically because its source for eggs – AquaBounty’s hatchery in Newfoundland, Canada – did not meet the state’s criteria for a qualified source.

According to DMR spokesperson Edward Hardy, the agency “terminated the applications of American Aquafarms after the company failed to fulfill its legal obligation to demonstrate an available source of fish to be cultivated at its proposed salmon farms in Frenchman Bay.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

American Aquafarms loses bid for essential lease

April 21, 2022 — American Aquafarms’ planned aquaculture project in Gouldsboro, Maine, U.S.A. hit a major setback as the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) decided it would no longer process the company’s lease applications.

American Aquafarms has been working to create a closed net-pen salmon farm in Frenchman’s Bay in Maine. To that end, the company purchased the former East Coast lobster facility in Gouldsboro and named Keith Decker as its CEO as the company negotiated the permit process for its farm.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource