Saving Seafood

AMERICAN AQUAFARMS CEO: Aquaculture can play a big role in Maine’s economy and climate change response

March 23, 2021 — Maine is setting the stage with its response to climate change, the need for greater sustainability and environmental stewardship.

Aquaculture plays an important role in all three.

The United States imports about 90 percent of the fish eaten in the country. Those imports ship consumer dollars out of the country, while also having a direct impact on the environment from the transportation required to deliver the food.

With wild fisheries under pressure from overfishing and warming oceans, aquaculture provides an opportunity to produce food closer to the people who will eat it and in a controlled and sustainable way.

That’s why American Aquafarms has proposed a new aquaculture facility along the working waterfront in Gouldsboro with pens located in Frenchman Bay.

We believe that this project will produce salmon safely and sustainably, while helping to fight climate change and creating good jobs for Maine people.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: American Aquafarms seeks approval for ocean-based salmon pens

March 11, 2021 — American Aquafarms, an aquaculture start-up headquartered in Portland, has filed two draft lease applications with the Department of Marine Resources to begin development of closed-pen, ocean-based salmon operation in Downeast Maine.

The two proposed sites would be in Frenchman Bay, off the town of Gouldsboro to the east and Bar Harbor to the west.

Each site would be 60.3 acres. The pens at each site would take up about 6.6 acres.

The company plans to establish a hatchery, fish farm facilities and a state-of-the art processing plant that’s expected to result in hundreds of jobs in coastal Maine.

“Maine is the ideal location for this project,” American Aquafarms CEO Mikael Roenes said in a news release. “By leveraging the state’s deep water assets with next generation eco-friendly technology to sustainably produce food close to its market, we have the opportunity to set a new standard in the United States. Additionally, we are confident that Maine has the workforce we need to fill the year-round, good-paying jobs we’re creating.”

Read the full story at MaineBiz

MAINE: Frenchman Bay salmon farm application filed

March 11, 2021 — American Aquafarms reported Wednesday that it had filed two draft lease applications for a closed-pen, Atlantic salmon farm in Frenchman Bay. The proposed two ocean sites, north of Bald Rock and The Hop islands, are in conjunction with the Portland-based company’s plan to buy East Coast Seafood Group’s seafood-processing facilities in Gouldsboro’s Prospect Harbor village. A fish hatchery would be built there as part of the project.

American Aquafarms’ March 3 submission of draft applications are part of the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ multi-step process for considering new aquaculture ventures. DMR has 30 days to determine if the applications meet its standards to proceed to a scoping session. If deemed complete, state authorities next would study the applications, conduct a site visit and hold a public hearing before issuing a final decision.

American Aquafarms CEO Mikael Roenes said the company’s project would result in hundreds of new jobs in the Downeast region. The 100-000-square-foot Maine Fair Trade facility and its wharf would become the base from which the fish farm’s barges and other craft would embark from to tend the Frenchman Bay ocean pens. The harvested fish would be processed on site. The existing warehouse would be converted into a hatchery for producing juvenile salmon and possibly cod to replenish harvested fish.

“Maine is the ideal location for this project,” Roenes said in a March 10 press release. “By leveraging the state’s deep water assets with next-generation, eco-friendly technology to sustainably produce food close to its market, we have the opportunity to set a new standard in the United States. Additionally, we are confident that Maine has the workforce we need to fill the year-round, good-paying jobs we’re creating.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Scallop closures announced

March 10, 2021 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources has instituted an emergency scallop fishing closure in the St. Croix River in Zone 3; and expanded existing closures in Frenchman Bay, Swan’s Island and Isle au Haut rotational areas.

“The department is concerned that continued harvesting for the remainder of the 2020-21 fishing season in these areas will reduce scallop broodstock further, as well as jeopardize sublegal scallops that were observed in the 2020 spring scallop survey that is essential to the ongoing recruitment, regrowth and recovery of the scallop resource,” according to the notice of emergency rulemaking. “An immediate conservation closure is necessary to reduce the risk of unusual damage and imminent depletion of the scallop resource in these four scallop resource areas.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

MAINE: Salmon farm sparks opposition

February 4, 2021 — Opposition is mounting to a large-scale salmon farm in Frenchman Bay before the project’s backers have formally submitted an application to locate roughly 30 net pens at two sites north of Bald Rock and the Hop islands.

In a related move, a citizens group is calling for the Maine Department of Marine Resources to toughen its rules regarding aquaculture leases that range widely from mussel to oyster cultivation in coastal Maine. Applications for these enterprises have jumped threefold in just five years.

Early this week, American Aquafarms’ President and CEO Mikael Roenes still had not filed a DMR application for his company’s proposed ocean farm to raise Atlantic salmon and possibly cod in the northern-northwestern section of Frenchman Bay.

From Norway’s southern coastal town of Grimstad, Roenes early last fall outlined his plan to raise the fish in floating net pens, fitted with polymer-membrane cloth sacks in which fish waste (feces and feed) collects at the bottom. The waste is pumped to and passes through an attached filtration unit before being discharged at sufficient depth into the sea.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American