The New Aquaculture

My essay on the history of aquaculture

2011-08-15T20:55:00.000-04:00

Lapham's Quarterly recently published my essay on the history of fish farming, "The Mastery of Fish".

The title comes from a line in Roger North's 1713 treatise on fish farming, “A Discourse of Fish and Fish-Ponds," in which he argues "the Mastery of Fish" will lead idle English landed gentry along a path to a happy life.

Check out my essay, share it on Facebook and let me know what you think. It was a blast to research and write.

Back from my blogging hiatus

2011-08-08T22:27:00.001-04:00

Just a quick post to say I'm back. The blogging hiatus is over.

My break wasn't for want of material. I'm working on a few aquaculture-related projects right now that I have been remiss in not sharing here. Plus, plenty of aquaculture news has come in over the wire in preceding months that I have failed to chime in on.

It would be a disaster to attempt to cover everything I missed in a single post (hopefully, I'll address the major issues in future posts), so I'll leave you with a photo I took last week at a cod farm in Down East Maine.

It doesn't matter if you work on a fishing boat or fish farm: When a school of mackerel swims by, grab your fishing rod.

Smoking ... err, I mean Salmon Farming...Kills?

2011-02-03T18:28:00.002-05:00

The anti-aquaculture rhetoric has heated up with a new group formed to combat what it calls "Big Aquaculture".

The Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture recently launched a new "smoking hot" campaign called "Salmon Farming Kills". It uses similar wording and imagery to the "Smoking Kills" campaign used to combat the tobacco industry.

The marketing campaign is designed to counter those from the aquaculture industry promoting farmed salmon.

The group says this month it will release a report on the dangers of salmon farming -- "Smoke on the Water, Cancer on the Coast". It will continue with reports on shrimp farming, tuna aquaculture and GE fish.

>> Read the group's entire press release

Portugal bets on offshore farms to triple aquaculture production

2010-11-16T16:04:00.000-05:00

Portugal's Minister of Aquaculture and Fisheries expects an expanding offshore aquaculture sector will help the country triple its aquaculture production by 2015, from 7,000 to 21,000 metric tons, according to a news report from FIS.

The minister, Antonio Serrano, said a "very substantial financial volume" is available through national programs to those interested in operating in the sector.

Hawaii leads nation in support of offshore aquaculture

2010-11-04T08:11:00.000-04:00

Hawaii Oceanic Technology expects to deploy its Oceanspheres by 2013

Hawaii's Board of Land and Natural Resources this week granted a 35-year lease to Hawaii Oceanic Technology to farm tuna on its 247-acre offshore fish farm, according to a press release from the company.

Bill Spencer, the company's CEO, says the lease sets a "historic precedent for Hawaii and the United States."

The company's site is in state waters, but offshore in 1,320 feet of water. While the United States lacks a regulatory framework to permit offshore fish farms in federal waters, Hawaii is the only state with a comprehensive legal framework that allows open ocean aquaculture and leasing an ocean column to companies that want to farm the sea, according to the company.

Hawaii Oceanic Technology, founded in 2006, plans to farm Yellow Fin and Big Eye tunas and market them as “King Ahi”. The company expects to have its first patent-pending fish cage, called the Oceansphere, deployed by 2013.

New Chesapeake coop helps oyster fishermen transition to farming

2010-10-26T08:35:00.001-04:00

A new cooperative in Virginia is helping some oyster fishermen -- or watermen, as they are known in the Chesapeake -- transition to oyster farmers.

The coop, Oyster Company of Virginia, will lease the farm sites from the state and buy the seed and equipment. Then, 12 former oyster watermen will plant the seeds, harvest and sell the mature oysters. The proceeds will go to pay the watermen and help the coop reinvest in new equipment.

You can read more about the coop in this story from the Daily Press down in Newport.

Debate brews over Maine oyster farm

2010-10-19T18:29:00.001-04:00

There is a good article in The Working Waterfront about broiling opposition to a proposed oyster farm in Down East Maine.

A company called Acadia Sea Farms is asking the Maine Department of Marine Resources for a 10-year lease on 50 acres of seabed in Goose Cove, which is near the entrance to Mount Desert Island. The public hearing on the proposed oyster farm has gone on for three nights and will continue for at least a fourth night, according to The Working Waterfront.

The Friends of Blue Hill Bay and the Friends of Goose Cove Bay are opposing the project, claiming it will harm the health of the bay.

Maine has a good track record in the licensing of aquaculture operations. The state regularly monitors the environmental effects of all aquaculture sites, and considers ecological impacts when considering applications. So, if you trust the DMR to do its job (as we are wont to do), then you need to trust the application process. Plus, oyster farms are some of the biggest success stories. Shellfish actually help clean the water by filtering it.

Since this is my blog, I'll shed my journalistic veil for one moment to share my fear that the opposition's real motive is NIMBYism. This opinion is supported by comments made by Sally Mills, attorney for the Friends of Goose Cove Bay. She said the group's members fear the oyster farm could become a floating industrial zone and could be a shock to waterfront homeowners, according to the The Working Waterfront.

"It's an extension of people's backyards," Mills is quoted as saying.

I wasn't present at these hearings and haven't spoken to those that oppose the farm, so there's a chance they have legitimate concerns that weren't accurately portrayed in a newspaper that covers the working waterfront and whose readers incude fishermen and fish farmers. But this article leads me to believe that we are witnessing NIMBYism in Goose Cove.

NIMBYism irks me. It's a tough nut to crack. On the one hand, I'm a firm believer everyone is entitled to their opinion. On the other, especially in this case, the people opposing the oyster farm are part of a community, one that has been home for years to working fishermen and fish farmers. I guess it boils down to my disbelief that one group of people (waterfront landowners) can be so inconsiderate to the economic pursuits of their neighbors (those who make their living on the water).

Okay, I've replaced my journalistic veil.

Another complaint came from an abutting landowner who also happens to be the manager of the nearby Trenton airport. According to the newspaper, this landowner worries the oyster farm -- more specifically, the birds it will attract -- will interfere with the airplanes taking off and landing at the airport. Certainly a concern, if proved accurate, that the state should take into account.

The Maine Aquaculture Association supports the project. Sebastian Belle, its executive director, lambasted those opposing the project. Belle told the newspaper that Mills is "looking for everything she can to scare people" and that the opposition is evidence of a class conflict waged by people who have "the luxury not to make their living on the water".

The fourth public hearing will be held in late October or early November, according to The Working Waterfront.

What do you think about the opposition to this oyster farm?

I cover halibut, kelp farming in Aquaculture North America

2010-10-01T00:41:00.002-04:00

I have a couple of articles in the July/August issue of Aquaculture North America. Unfortunately, the articles aren't posted online, but here are the synopses.

The first is about Maine Halibut Farms, which plans to break ground by next summer on a land-based halibut farm at a planned aquaculture business park in Corea, Maine. The company began in 2002 as a pilot project at the University of Maine's Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research, which has been conducting research on halibut aquaculture since 2000. The Atlantic halibut fishery is basically nonexistent, and those halibut that are caught are restricted to large sizes, so Maine Halibut Farms plans to fill a niche supplying restaurants in the northeast with plate-size halibut. (To see what I mean, check out this New York Times article about Marc Forgione in New York City.)

The second article is a profile of Ocean Approved and its kelp farm in Maine's Casco Bay. The company is in its second year of operation and spent the summer ramping up its production of kelp, which it sells in natural and health food stores in noodle cut, salad cut, and slaw cut. Paul Dobbins, one of the company's owners, told me he expects a "tenfold" increase in revenue from 2009 to 2010. Dobbins and his partner Tollef Olson are the former owners of Bang's Island Mussels farm, which they grew into a successful aquaculture business, but had put up for sale to focus on Ocean Approved.

Aquaculture North America is a trade magazine for the aquaculture industry published by Capamara Communications in Victoria, B.C.

Farming oysters for school credit

2010-07-01T16:40:00.000-04:00

The New York Times just published an interesting story about a NYC high school teaching shellfish aquaculture to its students as a way to get them interested in their local ecosystem. The unfortunate part of the story is that New York Harbor is so polluted, these students will never be able to eat the oysters they grow on beds there.

Follow up to "The simple truth"

2010-06-12T11:18:00.001-04:00

On my last post, "The simple truth," someone anonymous made the following comment: "Like any other human activity, we can screw it up. It's up to us to do it right. It makes no sense to foul your own nest."

I began my own short response, which quickly grew into something more fitting as its own post. So here it is.

Thanks, anonymous for your comment. Of course, you're right. People can screw it up. And there are plenty of examples out there of how NOT to operate a fish farm, from over use of pesticides in Asian fish farms to the overcrowding in the Chilean salmon farming industry that led to its own demise. But those opposed to open-ocean fish farming in this country use those examples, plus the argument that people screw it up, to oppose any expansion of this industry, no matter the motives of the fish farmers. Using the same logic, those same people should oppose any industry that impacts the environment.

We need to evaluate each fish farm on an individual basis: Does it operate in as sustainable manner as possible? Does it make efforts to reduce disease and subsequent use of antibiotics by farming at a low density? Does it source its feed from vendors who use fish meal and oil from sustainably-managed fisheries? Is it using Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture?

Then, we as consumers, make the choice of where we want to buy our fish, just like we do with any other farmed product. Do we want to buy fish from a Chinese farm with questionable practices (80% of seafood is imported in this country and the FDA inspects roughly 2% of it)? Or do we want to buy a fish from a local fish farm that makes an effort to operate in as sustainable a manner as possible?

I agree that people can screw up. But I also believe some people have the right intentions and are working to farm fish in a sustainable manner.

The simple truth

2010-06-11T13:43:00.001-04:00

"There is nothing inherently unsustainable with aquaculture as long as the producers choose to operate on a sustainable basis."

This simple comment -- made by University of Stavanger Professor Frank Asche, in recent remarks at the AquaVision conference in Stavanger, Norway -- pretty much sums up the issue for me. Like in any industry, it's the people who decide whether they operate in a sustainable matter. In the case of aquaculture, it behooves people operating fish farms to do it in a sustainable way because, in the long run, fish farmers need clean water and healthy fish.

Senator cites Gulf oil spill to stymie aquaculture

2010-06-03T18:08:00.002-04:00

Citing the Gulf oil spill, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on May 25 introduced legislation aimed at halting any federal attempts to set up a regulatory framework to permit offshore fish farms in U.S. waters. The bill -- the Research in Aquaculture Opportunity and Responsibility Act of 2010 -- could throw a wrench in NOAA's plans to set up a national offshore aquaculture policy.

Vitter claims the Gulf and its marine ecosystem, as well as its recreational and commercial fisheries, are under too much pressure because of the oil spill to be subjected to the potential additional stresses of fish farms. (Here's his press release.)

The irony, however, is that Vitter opposes President Obama's moratorium on offshore oil drilling in the Gulf. Apparently, the aquaculture industry puts more stress on the marine environment than the oil industry. As noted recently over at SeafoodSource.com, fish farms don't explode.

Vitter's bill would do the following:

Prohibit any federal agency or Regional Fishery Management Council from developing or approving of "any rule, regulation, fishery management plan, or fishery management plan amendment to permit or regulate offshore aquaculture" for three and a half years.

Provide grants for research related to land-based recirculating aquaculture systems.

Require the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to prepare a report on the environmental and economic impacts of open ocean aquaculture on native fish species, recreational and commercial fisheries, coastal communities, and land-based recirculating aquaculture systems.

And, finally, require a report be written on the economic potential of land-based aquaculture systems.

I'm sensing Sen. Vitter is partial to land-based aquaculture systems. What do you think?

Food & Water Watch, the ubiquitous opponent of all things mariculture, quickly threw its support behind Vitter's bill. "Given the current challenges facing the Gulf, it is important that we avoid introducing any additional factors that could jeopardize the region's socio-economic or environmental health," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch.

Dan Barber falls in love with a farmed fish

2010-03-30T12:33:00.000-04:00

This is a talk given by Dan Barber at a TED conference in February. Barber is a chef and scholar who last year received the James Beard award for America's Outstanding Chef. Barber discusses the dilemma chefs face in keeping fish on the menu, and his search for a sustainably-raised fish.

His search leads him to Veta la Palma, a fish farm in southern Spain, and a farmer, Miguel Medialdea. It's an interesting talk, which Barber presents with humor and passion. For more on Veta la Palma, you can also check out this June 2009 article from Time.

UMaine could drop aquaculture degree

2010-03-24T20:53:00.001-04:00

The University of Maine is considering cutting its bachelor degree program in aquaculture, according to a press release from the school.

The proposed cut is part of an effort to reduce the school's academic program budget by $12.3 million over three years. Several other degree programs are on the chopping block, including some that seem crucial to Maine's natural resources industries, like wood science and forest operations. The school said it would combine "those programs with other degree options to create efficiencies."

The decision to cut a degree like aquaculture seems odd considering the potential growth the industry could experience in the state and the usefulness a dedicated degree program would have to provide that growing industry with a trained work force.

My TV appearance

2010-03-24T16:06:00.001-04:00

This is a bit of old news, but better late than never. On Feb. 7, 2010, I was interviewed on Mainebiz Sunday, a statewide business television show, about my reporting on Maine's aquaculture industry and my trip to offshore aquaculture farms in Panama and Mexico that are using Maine-made technology from Ocean Farm Technologies. Take a look and let me know what you think.

A response from Food & Water Watch

2010-03-23T11:15:00.001-04:00

My recent two-part series on offshore aquaculture in Mainebiz (Part 1 and Part 2) received a response from Marianne Cufone, director of Food & Water Watch's fish program. While she agrees the United States needs to reduce its seafood trade deficit, she says expanding ocean fish farming is not the right way to do it. I've copied her letter to the editor below. Let me know what you think.

Ocean farming carries multiple hazards

To the editor:

The Mainebiz article published on Feb. 8, “Fishing for a future,” on the subject of aquaculture expansion in the state of Maine includes some good information – however, I believe some common misconceptions are also repeated therein, and Food & Water Watch, a consumer advocacy organization that has been involved with aquaculture issues for many years, would like to address.

The author rightly notes that the United States imports the vast majority of its seafood, creating a multibillion-dollar seafood trade deficit. However, expanding fish farms in U.S. waters is unlikely to eliminate this deficit. Currently, the U.S. exports about 71% of our domestic fish production – including tilapia, tuna, salmon, crab and some shrimp. Ironically, these are among the six top seafood imports as well. Essentially, we send abroad the fish we produce here in accord with more stringent labor, safety and health standards to fetch a higher price in international markets where our standards are more highly valued. U.S. restaurants and markets serve cheaper, often industrially produced, lower-quality, imported fish.

It is not likely that this will change dramatically with the growth of U.S. ocean fish farms. The industry is intended for profit—fish that are farmed in U.S. waters will therefore probably be sent elsewhere for bigger dollar returns—likely leaving the U.S. with just the environmental consequences, which can be severe.

For example, farming finfish may increase fishing pressure on wild fish and disrupt ecosystems. Most fish that are ocean farmed – like the cod and salmon mentioned in the article – are carnivorous and will eat feed that contains other fish. Food & Water Watch’s calculation of the conversion ratio for Atlantic cod, for example, found that it takes between 2.81 and 3.07 pounds of wild fish to produce just one pound of farmed fish. That means two to three times the amount of wild fish is being used than is being produced in a farmed fish – and that is both unsustainable and inefficient.

Already, significant amounts of wild prey fish are removed from ocean waters—about 23 million to 33 million tons annually worldwide were used for feed in recent years. Ocean farms in U.S. waters will need fish for use as protein in feed. Efficiency will likely dictate that the fish utilized for feed in domestic ocean farms should come from nearby waters—increasing the take of local wild fish. Often, fish used in feed are the same that wild fish and marine birds eat. This leaves less food in the wild and disrupts a delicate ecosystem balance. Recently a prestigious academic journal, Science, also suggested that the depletion of smaller fish that larger fish and other wildlife commonly eat (called forage fish), may contribute to food insecurity in certain countries, as these same fish are food for some people.

Also of concern, open water finfish farms can be dirty, pollute the environment and infect wildlife. Because ocean fish farms allow free flow of water between the cages and the ocean, concentrated amounts of fish food, wastes, diseases and any chemicals or antibiotics that may be used in farms can flow straight into ocean waters. A report about one ocean farming facility affiliated with the University of Hawaii said the farm “grossly polluted” the seafloor and “severely depressed” sea life. In Norway and British Columbia, numerous problems have occurred with parasites spreading from caged farmed salmon to wild salmon. If this polluting industry were to expand further in U.S. waters, it would likely affect wild fish populations, thereby hurting fishing communities that are already struggling.

Rather than constantly reciting the refrain that the U.S. needs to reduce our seafood deficit with ocean fish farming, government agencies and fish farming entrepreneurs would do better to consider more progressive solutions to our problems – like keeping more domestic seafood in the U.S., and looking toward pioneering new technologies like land-based recirculating aquaculture systems.

Marianne Cufone
Director
Fish Program, Food & Water Watch 
Washington, D.C.

IBSS discussion: Farmed salmon

2010-03-22T15:46:00.000-04:00

Last Monday afternoon, close to 100 people gathered in one of the myriad rooms at the International Boston Seafood Show for a panel discussion on the future of farmed salmon. There were the basic updates, forecasts for the future and, not surprisingly, some tough questions from the audience.

On the panel were Jason Paine, general manager of Multiexport Foods USA; Katherine Bostick, senior program officer at the World Wildlife Fund's Aquaculture Program (she also moderated the panel discussion); Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association; and Nell Halse, VP of communications for New Brunswick-based Cooke Aquaculture and its operating arm, True North Salmon Co.

The first issue addressed was whether the recent earthquake in Chile had any impact on that country's salmon farming operations. The quake did not affect Multiexport Foods, which owns salmon farms 400 miles north of the quake's epicenter, except for some tense moments the day of the earthquake when communication was spotty, Paine said. The earthquake happened on a Saturday morning, but by Wednesday the company was back to normal, flying farmed salmon out of Santiago. The earthquake had "virtually no impact," he said.

Cooke Aquaculture, which also owns a salmon farm in Chile, was not severely impacted by the quake, besides some of the expected disruptions to transportation and logistics, Halse said.

The conversation then shifted to an overall assessment of Chile's salmon farming industry. The Infectious Salmon Anemia outbreak in that country has been "nothing short of catastrophe," Paine said. He said this year will be the most difficult, but his future outlook is positive. There's been no more cases of ISA reported in the past year and the number of smolts being put in the water is on the way up. However, it's cost the industry there billions of dollars. "It's been a very expensive lesson to learn," he said.

Halse said Cooke's Chile operation is expecting "significant recovery." She pointed out that ISA is very difficult to eradicate, but can be addressed through better management. Given the fact that ISA first appeared in New Brunswick waters -- Cooke's native territory -- in 1996, and did significant damage to the salmon farms there and in Down East Maine, the company has dealt with this problem before. Halse said ISA has not been a serious problem in New Brunswick and Maine since then because of the measures undertaken to keep it under control. Cooke Aquaculture operates on a three-bay management system. At any given time, one bay is reserved for new smolts, another for market-size fish, while another lies fallow for a minimum of four months. The system is very similar to that used by terrestrial farms.

A question from the audience raised the worrying issue of sea lice gaining an increased resistance to Slice, the commercial name for the pesticide emamectin benzoate. Halse acknowledged that Cooke Aquaculture has noticed the reduced effectiveness of the pesticide. She said it highlighted the necessity for a broader, fully-integrated system for pest management, which includes not just pesticides, but operational changes like the company's bay management system. Cooke Aquaculture is also planning to bathe roughly two million market-ready caged salmon in the pesticide deltamethrin, marketed as AlphaMax, according to a recent story in The Working Waterfront. Halse said in an ideal world "we'd rather not use chemicals." She said Cooke is also considering alternative methods, from using hydrogen peroxide to farming cleaner species.

Walling, from the BC salmon farming industry, added that the over use of chemicals is a very serious concern for fish farmers, not only because of the risk that pests will develop a resistance, but "frankly it drives up costs."

One question from an audience member associated with Pure Salmon, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to improving the way salmon is produced, created a heated, though brief, discussion. The question was who is legally liable in a case where farmed salmon in Canada, treated with chemicals approved for use in that country, are exported to a country, such as the United States, where that chemical is not approved for use. Walling said she was not a lawyer and therefore could not answer the liability question, but "if Pure Salmon has an opportunity to take a company to court, I'm sure you'll do that," she said. Often, she said, the chemicals are not approved in the United States purely because the U.S. fish farming industry is still so small that the chemical companies have not seen it worthwhile financially to go through the process to get the pesticides approved.

The issue of using chemicals approved in one country and not another does create unique challenges for a company like Cooke Aquaculture, which farms salmon in the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the neighboring U.S. state of Maine. "It is a challenge because we don't have the same regulations, but we farm in the same body of water," Halse said.

As far as the next big thing in the salmon farming industry, the consensus of the panel seemed to be a focus on value-added products, from processed foods to innovative and convenient packaging.

Katherine Bostick, senior program officer at the World Wildlife Fund's Aquaculture Program, also said that organization is a month away from releasing a draft copy of its sustainable salmon farming standards. It's the result of a process begun five years ago.

Speaking of standards, a member of the audience directed a question at Halse about True North Salmon Co.'s marketing its salmon under the Seafood Trust Eco Label certification. The audience member said she knew several people who were unsuccessful in obtaining the standards the certification are based on, which raises questions of transparency. Halse said the certification standards are not the company's to disclose. She directed questions to Global Trust, but said she had heard the group was disclosing the standards.

Corey Peet, aquaculture campaigner for the David Suzuki Foundation, used the floor not to ask a question, but to comment on what he believes is the aquaculture industry's nonchalant attitude that reaching sustainability -- which he defined as reconciling economic, social and environmental issues -- will be a piece of cake.

He singled out the BC salmon farming industry as an example. Claiming it would be easier if there were one or two issues that needed reconciling, Peet said the industry has at least eight issues that need to be addressed. "I don't think these sustainability issues are easy to resolve," he said.

Another audience member from the David Suzuki Foundation also brought up David Suzuki's recent visit to one of Cooke Aquaculture's New Brunswick salmon farms. His criticism was that from what he had heard from Suzuki, not much has changed in the salmon farming business in the last five years, but now, all of a sudden, True North is marketing its salmon under the Seafood Trust Eco Label certification.

Halse disagreed with the assessment and negative tone the audience member assigned to David Suzuki's visit to Cooke's operations. She said Suzuki's visit was a very meaningful experience for the company. And, despite an acknowledgment that more needs to be done, she said it's that kind of positive dialogue is exactly what is needed. "That kind of approach will change the industry," she said.

She stressed that the dialogue needs to change from critics always focusing on the negative and the past, instead of focusing on the positive changes that the salmon farming industry is making. And they are making progress, she said. "We're on the road [to sustainability] and we're going to keep going," Halse said.

Researchers create GM trout with "six-pack abs"

2010-03-16T10:55:00.003-04:00

In my research and writing, I have not broached the subject of using genetically modified fish in farms, so I don't feel prepared to write about the subject. But I couldn't help posting this video about the GM fish with "six-pack abs" developed at the University of Rhode Island, and its apparent benefits to fish farming.

Researchers at URI have developed rainbow trout with 15% to 20% more muscle mass than normal trout, which if put on a global scale could have a significant impact in the amount of flesh harvested. According to URI, fish farms in the United States and Europe raise roughly 500,000 metric tons of rainbow trout each year. In the United States, those farms are concentrated in Idaho, New York, Pennsylvania and California and produce roughly $80 million worth of trout annually. By my calculations, GM trout would boost the harvest to as much as 600,000 metric tons without increasing the number of fish or the amount of feed. Of course, there's plenty of debate to be had about the use of genetically modified livestock to feed people, but in a purely quantifiable sense, the idea would seem to be a boon for fish farmers.

"If we were able to get these fish to the point where they would be accepted and could be grown, it has tremendous implications in increasing the mass of fish and increasing the profitability of fish culture," says Terry Bradley, the URI professor of fisheries and aquaculture that is leading the project.

We'd also have to get to a point where we could eat such ugly suckers.

Source: The University of Rhode Island

Cooke Aquaculture expands with acquisition

2010-03-15T13:49:00.000-04:00

One piece of news in the aquaculture industry that emerged this weekend is that New Brunswick-based Cooke Aquaculture has signed a letter of intent to purchase Ocean to Ocean, a Montreal-based frozen seafood importer, distributor and marketer, and its U.S. subsidiary Ocean King, which operates a processing plant in Philadelphia.

The acquisition continues Cooke Aquaculture's focus on vertical integration. The company posts more than $450 million in annual sales and controls every link in its seafood distribution chain - "from egg to plate," as Cooke's press release puts it.

The deal is expected to close at the end of March. "This purchase will enable us to strengthen our position with North American retailers in the value-added and frozen seafood category," says CEO Glenn Cooke.

The IBSS

2010-03-15T13:26:00.001-04:00

After a wet trip to the convention center, I was met this morning with a throng of thousands. The International Boston Seafood Show attracts more than 17,000 buyers and sellers from 90 countries.

Later this afternoon, there's a seminar on the future of farmed salmon. I'll post thoughts that emerge from that discussion.

Blogging from the Int'l Boston Seafood Show

2010-03-15T09:36:00.000-04:00

Took a bus this morning to Boston for the International Boston Seafood Show. I'll be attending a few interesting seminars on the seafood business, including one on private equity in the seafood business and another on the future of farmed salmon.

New fish-counting, food-sensing, growth-measuring, water-monitoring laser technology offers fish farmers a boost

2010-03-04T19:24:00.002-05:00

A pair of young Maine entrepreneurs have developed laser technology they say will help fish farmers better manage their livestock, according to Mainebiz.

AXAT Inc. (the name stands for algorithm experts for advanced technology) is close to commercializing laser sensors that fish farmers would set up above their open ocean fish cages or tanks and monitor the water below. The lasers are able to count the fish, and measure things such as their growth rate, pigmentation, the concentration of food in the water, and the water quality.

The purpose of this new technology is to help new fish farmers break into the business, Cody Andrews, the company's 23-year-old co-owner, tells Mainebiz. "What the United States is lacking is a really robust aquaculture industry," he tells the newspaper. "If we could make the whole system easier and we could make it more precise, we could limit how much expertise you need. You don't need to have a PhD to raise fish."

Go to the original article from Mainebiz >>

Fishing for a future, part 2

2010-02-20T10:37:00.000-05:00

The second article of my two-part series on aquaculture recently was published in Mainebiz.

Fishing for a future, part 2: Facing mounting costs and restricted access, Maine fishermen find new opportunities in a growing aquaculture industry

This piece looks primarily at Maine's aquaculture industry, and the increasing number of fishermen who are joining the ranks of the state's fish farmers.

My first article in the series explored aquaculture's move offshore and how one innovative Maine company is gaining a reputation in the global aquaculture industry, and can be read here.

Illegal fish farm pesticides blamed for lobster deaths in New Brunswick

2010-02-18T15:52:00.000-05:00

Environment Canada is investigating the use of an illegal pesticide, Cypermethrin, at salmon farms in New Brunswick's Bay of Fundy after tests revealed that dead lobsters had been exposed to the chemical, according to a report today from the CBC.

The pesticide is used in European fish farms to combat sea lice, but it is illegal to use in Canadian waters, according to the CBC.

The pesticide is known to be harmful to lobsters. The investigation was launched in response to a number of dead or weak lobsters that were discovered last fall in the Bay of Fundy.

New Brunswick's aquaculture industry denies its salmon farms use Cypermethrin. "We want the public to know that salmon farmers are extremely diligent at protecting the marine environment," Pamela Parker, executive director of the New Brunswick Salmon Growers Association, told the CBC. "This is where we grow our fish, too."

In 1996, Cypermethrin was found in the Bay of Fundy and blamed for the death of 50,000 lobsters, the CBC reported.

Investing offshore: A talk with David Tze

2010-01-27T18:27:00.000-05:00

David Tze is the managing director of Aquacopia, a New York-based venture capital firm focused solely on investing in early-stage aquaculture companies. The firm has invested in both Searsmont, Maine-based Ocean Farm Technologies and Open Blue Sea Farms, which currently operates the largest offshore fish farm in the world nine miles off the north coast of Panama. I wrote about both these companies in my recent cover story in Mainebiz.

I contacted David because I am interested in what an investor thinks of offshore aquaculture's prospects in the United States. Here's what he has to say:

Q: What are the prospects of the domestic aquaculture industry in the United States? In general, and specifically in regards to offshore aquaculture?

A: One has only to look to our domestic agriculture industry to see the indications that there is enormous potential for aquaculture in the United States. Like agriculture, aquaculture is a capital intensive food production process based on the most fundamental of natural resources: space. In the USDA, we already have one of the world's best organizations supporting food production. Moreover, the American academy has, for decades, produced much of the best work in aquaculture science and technology development. Where we have been deadlocked is in the actual cultivation of large quantities of seafood. Leaving aside the challenges of land-based aquaculture, much of the fault lies with the jerry rigged regulatory framework that, by default, currently governs offshore aquaculture in state waters. This legacy patchwork of disparate agencies is confusing, irrational, unpredictable, scattered, and unnecessarily expensive.

Q: Have you been following H.R. 4363? To what extent do you think the lack of a federal regulatory process for permitting an offshore fish farm in the EEZ impacts the expansion of the offshore industry in the country? Is H.R. 4363 a move in the right direction?

A: The lack of solid regulatory processes for permitting offshore fish farms in state waters and the EEZ is the key obstacle blocking the cultivation of healthy, high quality seafood in and for the United States.

I put significant effort towards forwarding a prior, Senate incarnation of H.R. 4363, a few years ago. I was on a panel at the National Marine Aquaculture Summit and visited members of Congress and congressional staff to share my perspective, while versions of that bill were being drafted for subcommittee. In this iteration, I've largely given my proxy to the Oceans Stewards Institute. I serve on the group's board of directors. As a group, we are actively engaging on H.R. 4363.

Per our website, The Ocean Stewards Institute is "a trade organization advocating for the emerging open ocean aquaculture industry. Members include open ocean aquaculture, seafood trade and supporting industries. Affiliate membership is offered to interested individuals and parties in government agencies, academia, NGOs and the media." Our Mission is to "To represent and work towards the best use and management of the open oceans, meeting the increasing demand for healthful seafood, through appropriate balancing of the expansion of environmentally sound open ocean aquaculture, with protection of open ocean resources and habitats."

In essence, we think that H.R. 4363 is a start, but should be improved in several essential ways before it becomes law. A more nuanced account may be had from Neil Sims, our chairman.

Q: Is it a case where investors and entrepreneurs are ready to go, but are scared away by the uncertainty (but certainly litigious process) of permitting an offshore farm? Or, are the economics just not there yet, so that even if there was a federal regulatory process put in place tomorrow it would still be several years before there was any movement on that front?

A: Some investors and entrepreneurs are ready to go, but, they are the exceptions. By analogy, football teams don't form or practice for the big game when there are no published rules, no referees, and no league. It will take time and positive feedback for awareness to develop on any real scale. Awareness will accelerate into interest. Then, broad interest will develop into readiness by investors and entrepreneurs. It's a chicken and egg problem. The cycle of inaction must, first, be escaped by creating a reasonable permitting process.

Audio slideshow

2010-01-26T12:10:00.003-05:00

Here's an audio slideshow I created to go along with the first Mainebiz article. It's narrated by Steve Page, president of Ocean Farm Technologies, and was recorded in a shipyard in Guaymas, Mexico, where Page was helping Pesquera Delly deploy several of Page's MicroPods to its offshore shrimp farm.

Fishing for a future

2010-01-26T12:06:00.000-05:00

The first article stemming from my reporting trip to Panama and Mexico was published yesterday in Mainebiz.

Fishing for a future: A Searsmont entrepreneur’s aquaculture innovation is welcomed in foreign waters while the U.S. plays catch up

This article looks primarily at Searsmont, Maine-based Ocean Farm Technologies and how its offshore cage technology is being used in Mexico and Panama. It also takes a broader look at the industry's efforts to move offshore and some of the arguments against such a move. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The second article in this Mainebiz series -- scheduled to be published Feb. 8 -- will take a closer look at aquaculture in Maine and whether offshore aquaculture has a future in the state.

More on H.R. 4363

2009-12-30T11:36:00.003-05:00

The text of the National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2009 is now available online. Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) introduced the bill, which would set up a regulatory framework to permit offshore fish farms in federal waters, on Dec. 16. The bill's intent, according to Rep. Capps, is "to preserve the integrity of our fragile ocean ecosystems, meet the increasing consumer demand for seafood, reduce stress on wild fish populations, and create jobs here at home."

However, not everyone agrees. On Monday, Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter issued a blistering response to the bill, calling it "unnecessary and not a step toward protecting our oceans and fishermen’s jobs from harms associated with ocean fish farming."

Judging by Hauter's comments, Food & Water Watch seems 100% against any expansion of the aquaculture industry offshore, instead encouraging the development of land-based, recirculating systems. This steadfast position promises legislative and legal battles ahead. I've requested an interview with Hauter to better understand Food & Water Watch's position.

For now, I'll republish the majority of Hauter's statement here:

"While Representative Capps may intend legislation as a safeguard against a piecemeal approach to developing and regulating ocean aquaculture, the ultimate effect is of streamlining the process for the industry to better establish itself in the U.S.

"Ocean fish farming can have devastating effects on the environment and fishing jobs and produce lower-quality fish for consumers. Environmental problems can include escapement of fish, pollution of surrounding waters with excess feed and fish waste, and transmission of parasites and diseases to wild populations. These problems will not be fully mitigated by the bill, which enforces very limited liability for damages to natural resources.

"Economically, fish farms can undercut the prices that local fishermen receive for their catch, further threatening an already vulnerable job market. This industry is not a solution to the question of how to meet the growing demand for seafood.

"While many proponents of the bill cite the undesirable situation of a piecemeal approach in regulating the industry as the reason the bill is necessary, in reality, there is no existing industry to regulate. Hawaii has two open ocean fish farms in operation, but they are located withinstate waters, so will not be affected by this legislation. A permit applicant in California for what would have been the first offshore fish farm in U.S. federal waters recently pulled out of the drawn-out permitting process.

"Rather than continue with legislation to regulate (and thus allow) ocean fish farming, Representative Capps should instead support legislation that would prevent the growth of this industry. To supplement U.S. seafood production and increase green jobs, a much more sustainable approach is necessary. Representative Capps should support the exploration of aquaculture techniques that have fewer negative environmental and economic impacts, such as land-based, recirculating systems, also called RAS.

"RAS are land-based, scalable, closed-loop facilities that retain and treat water within the system, eliminate the threat of escapes, reduce the discharge of waste and the need for chemicals or antibiotics, and can be developed in communities throughout the country. There is growing support and demand for RAS rather than using outdated ocean fish farming methods that can come with serious problems."

What do you think of H.R. 4363?

What do you think about Food & Water Watch's position that open ocean aquaculture should be avoided in favor of encouraging land-based, recirculating systems?

Capps' Offshore Aquaculture bill

2009-12-17T22:34:00.004-05:00

Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) last night introduced H.R. 4363, otherwise known as the National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2009.

The piece of legislation is designed to set up a federal regulatory framework to permit fish farms in federal waters, which often begin three miles off the coast. Currently, no national regulatory framework to permit such an operation exists, arguably stifling any investment in nascent offshore aquaculture technology in this country.

"Developing these guidelines has the potential to preserve the integrity of our fragile ocean ecosystems, meet the increasing consumer demand for seafood, reduce stress on wild fish populations, and create jobs here at home," Rep. Capps said in a press release from her office, which is embedded below.

The key provisions of the legislation include:

Establishing a clear, streamlined regulatory process for offshore aquaculture with specific provisions and permit terms to protect marine ecosystems and coastal communities

Requiring coordinated, regional programmatic environmental impact statements to provide regulatory certainty, ensure environmental protection for sensitive marine areas, and reduce conflicts among competing uses of the marine environment

Authorizing new funds for research to provide the crucial feedback needed for adaptive, environmentally-sound management of this new use of offshore waters

Click "Fullscreen" for a closer look.

A late night aquaculture bill...

2009-12-17T14:50:00.002-05:00

The Pew Environment Group this afternoon issued a statement in response to a piece of aquaculture legislation introduced late last night in the House of Representatives by Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA). The bill in question, H.R. 4363, seeks to set up a federal regulatory framework to permit offshore aquaculture operations.

Christopher Mann, senior officer at the Pew Environment Group, had this to say about the bill:

"The Pew Environment Group applauds Representative Capps for introducing legislation that would establish strong national standards for offshore fish farms. We have seen worldwide that poorly managed marine aquaculture causes substantial harm to fish, wildlife and their habitat.

There is not an overarching policy governing aquaculture development in federal marine waters. If the industry wants to expand into waters three to 200 miles offshore, we need a regulatory system specifically designed to address the environmental risks of fish farming and protect the health of marine ecosystems. This bill is an important first step in creating the necessary framework."

The bill is not yet available online. I'll be following this piece of legislation and will report back when I know more.

Chile hopes for salmon farming rebound

2009-12-10T12:18:00.000-05:00

The Chilean government wants to grow the country's aquaculture exports to $4 billion by 2015, according to a report from FIS. That's an ambitious goal considering the disease-induced crisis that hit the country's salmon farming industry -- far and away the largest part of the Chile's aquaculture sector -- in 2008.

The first case of Infectious Salmon Anemia, a very contagious disease fatal to the fish, but harmless to humans, was reported last year and quickly decimated the salmon farming industry in Chile. The culprit? Fish farms packed too tightly together, offering the ISA virus a field day among the fish.

Chile’s salmon exports totaled $2.4 billion in 2008. But officials expect exports will be down by 30% this year. And, because fewer fish were sown this year, exports are expected to decrease even further in 2010, FIS reported.

Hugo Lavados, Chile's Minister of Economy, used a rather morbid analogy to temper expectations of the ambitious goal. “If we do not reach the 4 billion dollars goal; no one is going to slit open their wrists, but we should apply the maximum effort possible.”

Read the FIS article >>

The first MicroPod is deployed in Guaymas

2009-12-02T18:21:00.003-05:00

Though I had to fly back to Maine before Pesquera Delly was ready to deploy their first MicroPod, Gustavo Valdez was nice enough to send me a few photos of last week's historic event.

The Delly V, one of Pesquera Delly's shrimp trawlers, tows a MicroPod to its site off the coast of San Carlos

Potential alternatives for fish feed

2009-11-23T15:33:00.003-05:00

The Ethicurean blog yesterday ran an interesting roundup of alternative fish feeds that fish farmers could use now or in the future to feed their water-bound livestock.

The ethical issue the blog attempts to address is the presence of fish meal and fish oil in what farmers currently need to feed to piscivore species of farmed fish, such as salmon. The blog post's author, Marc R., begins with the premise (supported by a recent article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) that catching wild fish to supply the fish meal and fish oil destined for the bellies of farmed fish is unsustainable.

The blog post covers everything from the potential of selectively breeding fish to better digest plant proteins to the GM question to raising insects for a feed substitute. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Valdez the younger on Pesquera Delly's future

2009-11-20T00:36:00.009-05:00

In the Guaymas shipyard, underneath towering cranes that resemble machines out of a sci-fi movie, employees of the company Pesquera Delly are busy constructing small (27-foot diameter) geodesic spheres known as MicroPods.

Walking among the handful of men, who are attaching triangular panel after triangular panel onto the forming sphere, is a young man wearing jeans and a gray striped polo shirt. A black sunhat hides his face from the sun. Gustavo Valdez is the son of Oscar Valdez, the owner of Pesquera Delly, and operations manager for the company's nascent aquaculture division. I pulled Gustavo under one of the towering cranes for a quick conversation about Pesquera Delly's pioneering attempts at farming shrimp offshore, the future of the company and how changes in the fishing and aquaculture industry will impact the coastal communities of Sonora, Mexico. An edited transcript is below.

Gustavo Valdez, head of Pesquera Delly's new aquaculture division

What is Pesquera Delly attempting with this project?

Gustavo: Pesquera Delly, as you may know by now, has been in the shrimp fishing industry and finfish industry for the last 15 years. Over the last five years we have seen the decline of the wild stocks and a weakening of the markets for wild species. So, we see this as a reconversion project. It's just a logical step in a policy that the company has undertaken to produce in a more sustainable way.

Do you think this transition from fishing to aquaculture will be seen everywhere as the next logical step?

I think so. I think it will be a necessary change. And we're seeing it already. I think in this region of the country, we're the first company that's doing it, but I don't think it will be long before more companies start doing it. This year, this [shrimp fishing] season, which just started a couple months ago ... usually the best part of a season is the first three or four months of a six-month season, and here we are two months down the road from the start and half the fleet is already tied to the docks because it's just not economically viable to continue fishing. So, it's a matter of whether you sit around and leave your boats, your assets, to do nothing for the rest of the year or you find a way to keep producing in a way that allows you to be economically viable. I don't think it is going to be a matter of realizing we have to do things more sustainably or friendlier to the environment. It's a fact of economic viability. If you've been involved in fishing your whole life and you have all your experience in that type of business, the next logical step is aquaculture. There's not going to be any other business ... I mean it's going to be a lot harder for a fishing business to go to another sector, for example, a construction business or into the tourist business, than from fishing to the aquaculture business, which are really related and that's exactly what we're doing.

You mentioned you're the first company in the region to make this transition. If more companies follow your lead and the offshore aquaculture industry takes off, what impact will this transition have on the coastal communities here?

It depends a lot on what these first companies that start venturing in the new industry will do. For instance, we have been trying to move the people we have hired in the [shrimp] boats to work on the offshore farm. For some people it has worked. For some others, it hasn't. So I think there will be a portion of the communities that do fishing that are going to get involved. It's going to be to a certain point because some people are just so used to going out to fish they are going to find a way to keep going after the fish. For some others, it is going to be easier to make this transition labor-wise. So, it really depends on the companies that start doing it first. How they approach that, their willingness to train the people to change their perspectives, because for a fishermen the perspective on individual economics is very different than anybody else's, because the mindset of a fisherman is you get most of your income at one point in the year then you plan on. That can't be possible if you plan to hire them as workers of a fish farm. You can't advance pay them for the whole year or for the whole harvest. So it's really up to the company to try and train those people not just operational-wise on the farm, but also try to change their mindset.

So, I think the short answer is it's not going to be one uniform change that can be seen throughout the region. It's just going to be so, so different. And it can also depend on region to region. Fishermen from Guaymas are very different from fishermen from Puerto Penasco.

What do you think the younger generation's role will be? You said some people have spent their entire lives fishing, but what about their sons? Like you and your father?

That's a different story. From my own experience, I think it's a lot easier to work with younger people because they're very open to new experiences and learning new stuff. So, they're just more interested than older people. In my particular case, I started working with a group of former fishermen trying to be offshore farm workers and it didn't turn out so well. From a group of five, I could get one or two and the rest I had to hire, just young guys, new people that were interested in learning to dive and really learn offshore farm operations.

Did you always expect you'd be a shrimp fisherman?

No. As a matter of fact, I went to law school. But, I think I never saw myself as a lawyer, which is probably what my dad wanted to see. I think, because we're also in the processing business, before this project came along I saw myself more involved in the processing business. But this project, I've taken such a great interest in it that this is where I'm going to stay. Now I don't see myself doing anything else. This is what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life.

Talking about the future, right now you're still in experimental mode, you have one AquaPod in the water, putting in the MicroPods. In the future, maybe five years from now, 10 years from now, what will Pesquera Delly's aquaculture business look like?

Well, I think we'll probably undergo an expansion phase. Our plans for the long term are to establish a series of three offshore farms: One here in San Carlos, where [the AquaPod] is now, another nearby and we're very likely going to expand down to Puerto Vallarta. We're already prospecting some sites there and started to do the paperwork to apply for a lease in that area. So, I think it's going to be a little more commercial scale. Probably near to 500 hectares, around 60 cages, 60 3,600 [cubic meter cages], divided in those three sites. Those are the plans for the future.

But I think our role in the whole offshore aquaculture industry here in Mexico, it's going to shift from just producing some stuff in the water to actually offering consulting services for the companies that start developing an interest to move in that direction. Will we still be in the production business? Sure we will. But, I don't think that's where we're going to stay parked. Our activities are going to diversify.

Your father, Oscar Valdez, mentioned taking the MicroPods and trying to get fishermen involved by setting them up with one as their own business. Do you think that's a viable option for the future?

Well, yes. That's an idea we had about six months ago. And interestingly enough we found out there was another group in the Baja trying to do the same thing, just thinking about the same strategy. Their approach is a little different because they're an NGO and so their work is really involved with social impact and environmental impact more than the business scope of the project. So when we found this out, we established contact with them and started developing a way to collaborate with each other to make it happen sooner rather than later. And this is the beginning of it. I think the first thing we have to do is prove the economic viability of that model. If you prove it to be economically viable, you don't have to convince anybody. Everybody will start coming to you and asking you to show them the way to start their own. It's not our goal to talk people into doing it just because of the social impact it will have or the environmental impact it will have, as it is the NGO's goal. From our perspective, it's the economic goal because we would be dealing the MicroPods for these groups and offer technical assistance to set them in place and get the culture going. From my perspective, it's very viable. I don't think it will happen in the very near future. I see it happening over a period of five years to really start taking off.

A MicroPod under construction in the Guaymas shipyard

The most important thing is at the level we have right now, the experimental level, there is already a lot of interest from these communities. There is a community here south of Guaymas. It's a community of Yaqui people and they've been here twice already just to check on the project, see how it is going and talking about their plans to negotiate with the government to get some funds to get a shrimp farm going. And I think they'll get it, we'll help them, but it's not going to happen right now. We have a lot of stuff to test, operationally, biologically, economically before we would take that step with them, but there is a tremendous amount of interest.

What's the response to your project been from the community?

I have to answer that question in two different parts because there are two different communities here in Guaymas. One is the Guaymas community where the traditional fishermen live, and we also have San Carlos where a big community of retired Americans live. The reaction has been really interesting because we thought we'd have a lot of interest from the Guaymas community, because this is related to shrimp and this has been a shrimping community for generations. And we thought we were going to have a reluctance from the San Carlos community to having a shrimp farm right there, in a place where they are supposed to be coming to retire to enjoy nature and have nothing to do with productive activities. And it was the entire other way around. We've had almost no interest here in Guaymas, not even questions asked, and that has been very interesting. Why people are not getting interested in it? I don't know. I mean we've had some interest, but nothing compared to what we thought it would be. And then in San Carlos, on the other hand, there are great expectations from everybody. At one point we were invited to a yacht club meeting and I thought we were going to be rejected by the club and the response was the exact opposite. They were really interested in what's going on. They found it interesting what we were going to raise. There are a lot of requests to go diving on the pods, there is even a group called the Ocean Camp that raises awareness programs for children and people in general that come to Mexico and they've been asking us to do guided tours of the farm to show their students what we're doing, what we're trying to accomplish, so it's coming from every direction. The skippers: We have yachts and boats coming to the site every day to check out what's going on, see if we're doing something to the cage. I've had requests to go help clean the cages, set up stuff, like moorings or new installations. So the response from San Carlos has been really great as opposed to what I thought in the beginning.

What's the Mexican government's position?

It took us 12 months to get the first license for the first site. And to do this for shrimp it's so innovative that even the government is afraid because there is a lot of reluctance to do anything new. For instance, the first time we had a government official to the site to showcase the project, the first reaction was to try to convince us to orient the project back to finfish because that is what is being proven worldwide, finfish culture offshore. While there are some problems there [with finfish aquaculture], starting with hatchery technology, which is practically nonexistent here in Mexico. So, that was their first reaction: a reluctance to support anything that hadn't already been proven somewhere else. Over the last two years we have been able to shift that perspective of the government from a total reluctance to partial support. But I think there's a lot of work to be done in those areas. I think it's a little tricky getting the government involved. I think it takes a lot of planning before you present results, because we have seen how other industries, like the onshore aquaculture industry have gone to a total mess due to a lack of regulation, proper regulation, when those industries have proved to be viable. So, what we're trying to do here is really plan the scope the regulation has to have with the support of the NGO community before we come up to government and make a proposal, or at least a presentation. The government is aware of the project, they have been supportive to some extent of the project. But I think again there's still a lot of work that has to be done in the lobbying with them.

So, regulations. Are there adequate regulations set up for this industry since it is so new?

No. Exactly. Since this is so new there are no regulations that exist at this point. So if we go out there and prove it's a tremendous business, the risk is the government will not have the proper planning for what the industry can become. That's the risk, so you have to be very careful on what the steps are going to be.

Steve Page arrives in Guaymas

2009-11-17T19:58:00.006-05:00

I received a call this morning at 8 a.m. from Steve Page, the owner of Ocean Farm Technologies in Searsmont, Maine. He had arrived in Guaymas the night before and was in Mexico to help Pesquera Delly deploy several of their AquaPods over the next several weeks.

Steve Page, founder of Maine's Ocean Farm Technologies, stands in front of an AquaPod in Guaymas, Mexico

Steve told me he would be at the shipyard in Guaymas all morning overseeing the construction of a smaller AquaPod and for me to come down any time. I hopped on a bus and made the trip to the Guaymas waterfront, passing piers lined with the rusted hulks of shrimp trawlers that had seen better days.

I arrived at the shipyard unequipped linguistically to talk my way past the security guard, who was an older man with deep wrinkles and silver-framed front teeth. I tried to explain I was supposed to meet someone there, but he didn't understand. I told him I was a journalist in Spanish, which may have been the wrong choice since it only seemed to fortify his position that I did not belong. I then dropped Oscar Valdez's name and said I was there to meet him. I wasn't, but I thought I'd take a chance. Oscar Valdez is the owner of Pesquera Delly, but I wasn't there to meet him nor did I know if he was even at the shipyard that morning. Luckily, he was. Though even he tried to turn me away with claims that everybody was too busy until I told him Steve Page had invited me down that morning. Long story, short, I finally gained entrance into the shipyard.

Two halves of the 3,600 cubic meter AquaPod, waiting in the Guaymas shipyard for deployment

Pesquera Delly employees were still putting together the smaller AquaPod that was being assembled when I had visited the shipyard last week. Steve Page dubbed the smaller cages MicroPods because their 27-foot diameter and 212 cubic meters of volume is dwarfed by the 64-foot diameter and 3,600 cubic meters of its big brother. Still, each of the eight MicroPods Pesquera Delly plans to deply could provide up to eight tons of farm-raised shrimp. That's not a bad yield given the fact that a local shrimp trawler may pull in, on average, 13 tons of shrimp during the six-month shrimp fishing season, Javier Valdez, one of Oscar's sons, tells me while standing under the unfinished MicroPod.

A crane suspends the MicroPod while workers complete its construction

Right now the MicroPods are being used for experimental purposes -- checking the viability of new materials and configurations -- but the longer-term goal is to demonstrate the economic viability of the MicroPod as a platform for helping transition struggling fishermen into small-scale fish farmers. This long-term goal is shared by Brian O'Hanlon at Open Blue Sea Farms in Panama and Pesquera Delly in Mexico. The idea has also garnered some attention from around the world. Steve says he's received inquiries from countries such as Ecuador and Indonesia about the MicroPods as an alternative for local fishermen.

It doesn't matter if I'm in Maine, Panama or Mexico, the stories I've heard all have the same theme: Poorly managed wild fisheries have meant poor yields for the fishermen, prices for their catch are not going up while the cost of doing business only seems to increase. I'm sure the MicroPod will play into the recently announced Cod Academy program in Maine, where former fishermen will spend a year learning the ins and outs of aquaculture. (I plan to cover this new program in more depth when I return to Maine.)

Steve was also in Guaymas to get an update from Oscar Valdez about how the project was going. Using offshore cages to farm fish is a new idea, but using AquaPods to farm shrimp is an even bolder endeavor. "In the beginning, when we begin with this project, many people say 'You're crazy. You put shrimp inside [the cages]? No, it's not possible.'" Oscar says.

But Oscar and Pesquera Delly, looking for an alternative to shrimp fishing, is confident that farming shrimp in offshore cages is the way of the future. Even Steve is blown away by the project. "If you had asked me a year ago if I would be designing a containment system for shrimp, I would have laughed," he says.

Steve Page and Oscar Valdez

Pesquera Delly already has one 3,600-cubic-meter AquaPod deployed two kilometers off San Carlos and it has already produced one harvest of approximately 13 tons, or 130,000 adult shrimp. Unfortunately, the expected yield was supposed to be 40 tons. The culprit? Hurricane Jemina. The hurricane-induced conditions created strong ocean currents from unexpected directions that caused gaps between some of the AquaPods panels and allowed a significant amount of shrimp to escape.

That trial run has taught Pesquera Delly many things. "We need to change the design of the cage because it's not fish, it's shrimp," Oscar says.

One change that's already been made is that Steve and his engineers have designed a completely new mooring system for the site given the hurricane experience.

Over the next few days, Pesquera Delly plans to tow the MicroPod to the site two kilometers off San Carlos and deploy it in 120 feet of water. Stay tuned.

Desert-cum-shrimp farm

2009-11-14T12:01:00.008-05:00

I visited a traditional shrimp farm while I was in Sonora. To get there, we drove away from the coast through a desert landscape with no paved roads, just wide tracts of tread-marked sand.

The road to the shrimp farm

When we arrived the shrimp farm was barren desert. The shallow ponds where they raise the shrimp were sandy patches with cows grazing the small amount of green scrub. The farm had been damaged during Hurricane Jimena, which hit the Sonoran coast in early September.

One of the empty shrimp ponds

However, the company, owned by the Luebbert family, is working on getting the 45-hectare farm back on line. I found the farm's manager, Ricardo Loreto, working on the pumps that fill and circulate the ponds with ocean water.

Loreto says the shrimp farms are struggling because of the low price for shrimp and the high cost of feed. Feed, he says, constitutes as much as 70% of the farm's expenditures. A ton of feed costs $850 and the shrimp need about 350 tons per cycle, which can last 90 to 110 days. Each cycle, the farm yields about 180 tons of shrimp. By my math, that means it takes roughly two tons of feed for every ton of shrimp produced. However, Loreto says the farm needs 1.5 kilos of food for every kilo of shrimp. (This interview was being translated and I wasn't aware of a discrepancy until I got my hands on a more thorough translation.)

Ricardo Loreto stands in front of the pumps that supply the shrimp farm with ocean water

I ask Loreto what he thinks of Pesquara Delly's attempts to farm shrimps in offshore cages. "I think it's a very good idea," he says, citing the open ocean water as a healthier environment for the shrimp and a suspicion that the infrastructure costs may be less than a land-based farm, which requires large amounts of electricity and diesel fuel.

Loreto has watched the shrimp fishermen struggle year after year. "I think aquaculture is the option for the future," he says.

Pesquera Delly

2009-11-10T23:04:00.006-05:00

I came to Guaymas to meet Oscar Valdez, owner of Pesquera Delly, a local fishing company that traded in its fishing boats for fish cages.

However, I was never certain he knew I was coming. I showed up with my fingers crossed that I would land the interview and today my wish was granted.

It was all about the connections. The mother of my translator worked in shrimp aquaculture in the past and now runs a conservation organization in Guaymas. She knows Oscar Valdez personally and was able to put in a good word and line up an interview.

Oscar Valdez

This morning my translator and I drove to a seafood processing plant in the industrial section of Guaymas. We waited in a small room that reeked of fish. A faded photo of a fishing trawler hung from the wall. The receptionist wore a white lab coat and white Wellington boots. At one point she left her desk and came back with a shower cap on.

Oscar Valdez arrives and takes us upstairs into his office, a large white industrial box with a table and desk. A ventilator in the wall above his desk offers a constant hum.

Pesquera Delly at its peak had 11 fishing boats in its fleet. Today there are two. Valdez says the business had become difficult as the wild catch fell and its costs increased. He knew it was a time to make a change. So, taking advantage of a government program that pays fishermen to trade in their fishing boats ($100,000 each), Valdez cashed in four and used the money to buy three AquaPods from Ocean Farm Technologies in Searsmont, Maine, with the idea being to farm shrimp in the Sea of Cortez.

Oscar Valdez stands in front of half an AquaPod under construction on the docks in Guaymas

Valdez's vision is to reduce the number of shrimp boats in Mexico, which would relieve pressure on the wild populations, and offer those former fishermen another option. He hopes to demonstrate that farming shrimp and other species is a viable business in the Sea of Cortez, one that could offer fishermen another chance at making a living from the sea.

The AquaPods were not designed for shrimp, which have very different needs from fish, so Valdez has been working with Ocean Farm Technologies to make modifications to the cages to accommodate shrimp. In fact, Steve Page, the owner of Ocean Farm Technologies, and some of his staff will be in Guaymas next week to meet with Valdez.

Valdez inside half an AquaPod

In addition to the three large AquaPods Pesquera Delly owns, they are also deploying eight small AquaPods as a test. Each of the eight will be deployed with unique characteristics -- like different placement of the floats, for example. The goal will be to find the characteristics best suited to farming shrimp in AquaPods. The first of the eight will go in the water next week.

Sonora is the shrimp producing capital of Mexico and it was in the 1990s when shrimp aquaculture surpassed the yield of fishing boats. However, traditional shrimp farming in Sonora consists of long shallow ponds on land, though near the shore so ocean water can be pumped through them. Valdez didn't want to go that route for various reasons. One was cost of shrimp feed. While feed consists of a large portion of the traditional shrimp farms' cost, Valdez says he needs to feed the shrimp in his AquaPods much less because their diets are supplemented with food from the wild that floats through the cages. He says a submerged cage also offers a healthier environment for shrimp.

I plan to visit Pesquera Delly again next week when Steve Page comes to visit and the company deploys the first small experimental AquaPod. So, more posts to come on this company.

Here's a bonus photo from today:

Me interviewing Oscar Valdez

Estoy en Guaymas

2009-11-10T00:51:00.004-05:00

(A quick departure from my recap of my time in Panama to update you on where I am today.)

I arrived in Guaymas, Mexico, yesterday. It was a beautiful drive through the sparse, cactus-covered landscape of the Sonoran desert to reach the brilliant blue of the Sea of Cortez. The Mexican state of Sonora is the largest producer of shrimp in the country and I'm here to meet with Oscar Valdez, the owner of Pesquera Delly, a company using Ocean Farm Technology's AquaPods to farm shrimp.

But before speaking with Mr. Valdez, I wanted a better understanding of the story of shrimp farming in Sonora. For a history lesson, I visited Karl Heinz Holtschmit, a former professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey's marine sciences school in Guaymas and a 40-year veteran of the Sonoran shrimp aquaculture industry.Holtschmit told me how Tecnológico de Monterrey's marine sciences school in Guaymas was the second place in the Americas to successfully farm shrimp back in the late 1960s (Texas A&M University was the first), but that it still took more than 20 years for Sonora's shrimp farming industry to take off because of Mexican laws that prevented private ownership of shrimp farms. He took me on a sometimes dizzying tour of the different acronymical diseases (IHHN and TSV) that have ravaged shrimp farms here. He told me about the early conflicts between shrimp fishermen and shrimp farmers, which has lessened as more former fishermen are turning to aquaculture as a means to make a living from the ocean (a situation comparable to what's happening in Maine).

Shrimp farms are different than other aquaculture operations I've discussed in Maine or Panama. In Sonora, the shrimp farms consist of long shallow ponds on land, but close to the shore so that fresh ocean water can be pumped into the ponds. The ponds allow the shrimp farmers greater control over their livestock, such as being able to use more efficient feeding systems. In 2003, the yield from Sonora's shrimp farms surpassed that caught in the Sea of Cortez and Holtschmit doesn't see that trend ever reversing.

Holtschmit knew of Pesquera Delly's departure from the norm, but didn't have any details on how it was doing. Hopefully, those details will be forthcoming tomorrow: I was finally able to make contact with the company and the owner has agreed to meet me tomorrow morning in Guaymas!

I plan to transcribe and post my entire interview with Holtschmit at a later date.

Hasta luego.

Open Blue, part 2

2009-11-08T10:11:00.010-05:00

Puerto Lindo, 10/30/09

My first morning in Puerto Lindo I hop in a boat with Brian and Ben Fazioli (an Australian and Open Blue's production manager) and head to the company's 74-foot former cargo ship, whose blue and rusted hull can be seen moored in the harbor.
(In the photo, you can also see three SeaStations, an open ocean fish cage manufactured by Washington-based OceanSpar, waiting to be towed offshore. Open Blue Sea Farms already has two SeaStations deployed offshore and one more still in pieces on the beach. It also has four small AquaPods, though only one currently contains fish.)

Engine trouble has rendered the ship, the Pristine Oceans, dead in the water while the company's full-time diesel mechanic works to fix the problem. The engine has been taken apart, had pieces sent to Panama City to be fixed, but still new problems seem to crop up as soon as others are fixed. The ship is needed to tow the three OceanSpar fish cages in the harbor to the offshore sites.

From the water, I see Puerto Lindo for the first time. It is surrounded by lush hills of green vegetation. Palms dot the shore. Except for the sailboats in the harbor (Puerto Lindo is a popular spot for Caribbean sailors and as a stopover point during the ocean passage between Columbia and Panama), the view could be exactly what buccaneers like Sir Henry Morgan saw in 1668 when he and his English soldiers sacked Portobelo, one of the centers of Spanish trade in America and only miles down the coast from Puerto Lindo.

The mechanic is still working in the fever hot depths of the Pristine Ocean's engine room. There's hope the work will be done in time to begin towing the first SeaStation this afternoon. To tow a cage to the offshore site takes approximately 24 hours. Because the weather begins to turn in early November, it's a race against time to get the three cages deployed offshore quickly.

Leaving the side of the Pristine Ocean, we head out of the bay. Brian wants to check the currents along the tow route to check how much force will push the cage towards shore as it's towed. To accomplish this, Brian has brought a white bucket with a weight hanging from its bottom and a rope and buoy attached above. At three predesignated spots, Brian fills the bucket with water, drops it in the water along with its hanging weight and records a GPS waypoint. The buoy floats on the surface. Now we wait for 10 minutes as our boat and buoy drift with the current. When the time is up, we retrieve the buoy, Brian marks another GPS waypoint to see how far it's moved. "Believe it or not, you're looking at one of the most advanced fish farms in the world," Brian says before retrieving the plastic bucket-cum-current meter.

As we drift, Brian explains why he believes fish farms will continue to be an important source of seafood and what he is trying to accomplish with Ocean Blue Sea Farms. Compared with the way humans raise other animals for human consumption, Brian says fish farming is far more efficient in its use of resources, from water to energy, than other forms of land-based livestock operations. "I think fish feed can be the best source of renewable energy on the planet," Brian says.

Fish feed for carnivorous fish contains fish meal and fish oil from small fish such as anchovetas and menhaden. The feed is one of the points of contention between fish farmers and those who say farming carnivorous fish such as cobia and salmon is by its nature unsustainable because it puts increased pressure on other wild fisheries to source the feed. In response, Brian says it can be sustainable if fish farmers focus on sourcing their feed from companies that acquire the fish meal and fish oil from sustainably managed fisheries. Also, Brian says one of the reasons cobia is a good fish to farm is that they require less fish meal and oil than other fish.

Brian says there are several reasons to move the aquaculture industry offshore, chief among them are to avoid conflict with recreational boaters, commercial fishermen or coastal landowners, and have cleaner water and more space to farm fish at lower densities.

"Why Panama?" I ask.

Simple really. Panama was receptive to the company's plans and offered less red tape, Brian says. Before launching Open Blue Sea Farms, Brian ran another aquaculture company, Snapperfarm, in Puerto Rico. Snapperfarm was only "demonstration scale," Brian says, but was one of the first companies to farm cobia and was the first to farm cobia offshore, which it did in first generation models of Searsmont, Maine-based Ocean Farm Technology's AquaPods. But while Puerto Rico was a good spot for research and development, it was a difficult place to turn it into a commercial-scale operation, Brian says. He did not consider launching an offshore fish farm in the United States for the same reasons, the hassle and cost it would have taken to get any offshore fish farm permitted.

I tell him some people would view Open Blue Sea Farms intention of choosing a place with few environmental regulations to launch its business as tantamount to operating an environmentally unsound project.

Brian reiterates his committment to operating his business in an environmentally sound way. After all, he says, it's within his company's best interest to farm fish in a sustainable way. "We want to build something that will last a long time," Brian says. "Not something that's going to die out in a couple years."

He says he's even worked with the Panamanian government over the past year to create some regulations for offshore fish farms. For example, mandated buffer zones around aquaculture lease sites, which prevents fish farms from packing too many cages into too tight of a space and upping the chances of disease. Getting the regulation passed wasn't a purely altruistic measure: It also protects Open Blue Sea Farms' 2,500-acre lease site, which Brian says is prime ocean real estate for an offshore fish farm, from future encroaching competitors.

On the way back from checking the currents, we stop at the three SeaStations so they can do some work in preparation for the offshore towing. And the time comes for what I've been anticipating: Brian asks if I want to get in the cage with the fish while they work. I give an enthusiastic yes and grab my fins and mask. I leap from the boat onto the SeaStation, put on my fins, unzip the opening in the net and -- a bit of fear racing up my spine -- plunge into the warm Caribbean water and a confined area with 10,000 fish with the nickname "little shark face" for obvious reasons.

When I open my eyes, I am overwhelmed by the sight. I am surrounded by thousands of fish, between a foot and two feet long. The fish are colored a range of grays and near black. Most are a dark gray with a white line down the length of their bodies. They have a dorsal fin that give them the shark-like resemblance, especially when their fins break the surface when they feed. Luckily, these fish had already been fed today so aren't hungry. Otherwise, Brian says they might have nipped at me.

I'm only snorkeling, so I can't go very deep inside the cage. These SeaStations, which from top to bottom are roughly 80 feet, are only half in the water because the fish are smaller. Once they're towed offshore, they'll be fully submerged. While I'm snorkeling near the center of the cage, which is actually a diamond shape, there's a 40 foot drop to the bottom, the area teeming with fish.

The fish don't seem scared of my presence. They swim around me, under me, above me. They come close to my face, appearing to look me in the eyes. However, when I reach out my hand to touch one, the fish in the area surge away from me.

I swim with the fish for 20 minutes, marveling the whole time at the fact I'm in Panama swimming in what seems to me my own private aquarium and getting paid to do it. I love being a journalist.

Open Blue, part 1

2009-11-03T12:04:00.014-05:00

Puerto Lindo, Panama, 10/29/09

The drive from Panama City to Puerto Lindo was pleasant. It's a strange feeling to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean in one afternoon. Richie Pretto, general manager of Open Blue Sea Farms, and Brian O'Hanlon, president of Open Blue Sea Farms, picked me up in the city and we took the highway north. The highway is less than a year old and has reduced a trip from Panama City to Colon from three to one hour.

During the ride I learned more about the backstory of Open Blue Sea Farms. Richie Pretto was one of the founders of Pristine Oceans, a company formed by Seattle, Washington-based Environmental Technologies Inc., which manufactures aquaculture feed systems, and Panamanian investors. But, according to Brian, ETI didn't have the experience to launch a fish farm and took Pristine Oceans in the wrong direction. So Pristine Oceans tanked at first. Panamanian investors pulled out. Employees were let go. Richie says it was the business plan, which was developed from scratch because very few people had seriously attempted to launch an offshore fish farm. "It's a new experience for everybody," Richie says. "There are only a handful of people who've done this: Brian, Kona (referring to a company in Hawaii) and some guy in South Korea who doesn't speak English or Spanish."

But Richie didn't give up. He bought out the other investors, ditched the U.S. company and approached Brian and Open Blue Sea Farms, which had been considering Panama for an offshore aquaculture site since 2005. Rather than duplicate efforts, Open Blue Sea Farms arranged to acquire Pristine Oceans. Open Blue officially took over operations in Puerto Lindo on August 1, but continues to finalize the acquisition.

Today, the company employs 30 people. Two months ago it had 10 employees, Richie says.

Starting a company attempting to do something that hasn't been done before is not an easy proposition. Its a startup, but one that has very high upfront capital costs followed by a lag in any cash flow until the fish can be farmed roughly a year later. As a result, the company has the feel of a startup, complete with the employees working long hours and going above and beyond to make the company a success, Richie says. "Everyone here is in endurance mode," Richie says.

While we were in the car crossing the isthmus that is Panama, Brian was checking his email on his iPhone. One email made him speak up from the backseat. It was from Mario Batale's business manager. Brian bumped into Batale the last time he was in New York. He didn't let the opportunity pass him by. He introduced himself, told Batale about Open Blue Sea Farms and the cobia they are farming. Last year, Batale competed against Jamie Oliver on the "Battle Cobia" episode of Iron Chef America. They didn't use Open Blue Sea Farms cobia and Brian wanted to make sure that didn't happen again. The email from the business manager was a followup asking Open Blue Sea Farms to contribute some cobia to a benefit event Batale is hosting. "We'd be delighted," Richie says from the driver's seat, smiling.

Cobia is a solitary fish, so it has never been extensively fished and is still relatively unknown to many consumers. But it is a good fit for aquaculture. It breeds well in captivity, it grows quickly and, though a carniverous fish, it doesn't require high amounts of fish meal and fish oil in its feed, according to Brian.

It was night by the time we reached the small fishing village of Puerto Lindo. I met a few of the employees in the office before Brian and I walked down the beach to a restaurant with white plastic tables and chairs set up outside on a patio. In the daytime, we would have seen several sailboats moored in the bay, along with three fish cages that Open Blue has set up in the bay, ready to tow to an offshore site. We ordered a few Balboas, a Panamanian cerveza, and began to chat about Brian's ironic dislike of eating fish. "I wish I'd eat more," he says. "I know it's health benefits. But I have this mental problem."

Brian comes from a longline of men in the seafood business. His grandfather and father were both seafood distributors in New York. "So I kind of grew up being force fed fish. So I have this mental block," he says. "I blame my grandmother."

Brian's interest in aquaculture was fostered by a deep love of the ocean and his family's personal experiences with fishing. His father invested in cod boats in the 1980s, which proved to be a bad business decision as cod landings suffered. "Fishery collapse has wreaked havoc on my family," he says. "So I developed an interest in aquaculture at a young age."

His attraction to the business was also driven by two pieces of advice from his father: He would never make money as a marine biologist and that he'd never meet a beautiful woman working on the water. (For the record, Brian's wife is a personal trainer.)

So he found himself hatching red snapper in his parents' basement at 17, launching an aquaculture company in Puerto Rico in his 20s and now, at 30, leading one of the most innovative aquaculture companies on the planet.

Coming up...the fish farm and swimming with the cobia

The men of Open Blue Sea Farms

2009-11-02T16:10:00.015-05:00

I just returned to Panama City after three days in Puerto Lindo, where Open Blue Sea Farms has its aquaculture operation. Before I get into the nuts and bolts of the fish farm, let me introduce you to the faces behind the story. Open Blue Sea Farms employs roughly 30 people. Here are a small handful of those workers.

Brian O'Hanlon - founder and president of Open Blue Sea Farms. A native of New York, O'Hanlon comes from a third generation seafood family. He began his career in aquaculture at 17, when he gutted his parents basement to build a hatchery for red snapper. No one had hatched this species in captivity before, but O'Hanlon was successful by tricking his brood stock into thinking it was mating season by altering the temperature of the water and length of the day that light shown on the tank. At 30, he now runs a company pursuing another first: to prove that raising fish in offshore cages can be a sustainable and profitable practice. In the photo, O'Hanlon in the bay of Puerto Lindo. In the background are two AquaPods from Searsmont, Maine-based Ocean Farm Technologies. The cages are currently empty, but the company expects to fill them with cobia in January.

Richie Pretto - general manager of Open Blue Sea Farms. Richie is Panamanian and a veteran of both the U.S. Army and Panama's shrimp farming industry. Richie was one of the original founders of Pristine Oceans, the Panamanian company that started operations in Puerto Lindo in early 2008. However, it struggled from lack of experience and was near shuttering when Open Blue Sea Farms got involved. O'Hanlon had been considering Panama as a site for an offshore fish farm for several years and instead of duplicating efforts, acquired Pristine Oceans' assets. Open Blue officially took over operations of Pristine Oceans in August.

Ben Fazioli - production manager. An Australian and veteran of that country's salmon farming operations, Ben met Richie at a conference and decided to throw his lot in with the nascent Pristine Oceans. Ben also worked at a salmon farm for six months in Chile and witnessed first hand the havoc that unsustainable practices, such as stocking fish at very high densities, can have on the quality of fish and the industry as a whole.

Luis - Scuba manager. Luis is a commercial scuba diver who was recently hired to take care of Open Blue Sea Farms' scuba diving operations. A fish farm requires a number of skilled divers to maintain the submerged fish cages, from mending nets at 30 feet below the surface to collecting the dead fish, or "morts," at the bottom of the cages.

Valerio - expert in fish hatcheries. Valerio, an Italian, will take over Open Blue Sea Farm's hatchery operations when they are built. In the meantime, he helps out everywhere. The rest of the staff look forward to his nights in the kitchen.

Javier - employee. Javy is a veteran of Panama's shrimp farming industry and a skilled scuba diver. He lives about two hours from Puerto Lindo and commutes home a few times a week.

Mario - employee. Mario is a diver and good dancer.

Ismael - employee. Ismael is a relatively new employee at the company. His skill is scuba diving.

Cappy - employee. Cappy lives in Puerto Lindo and is very skilled with a hook and line thanks to the fact he's been fishing since he was five years old.

Faustino - employee. Give him a rope and he'll splice it with the best of them.

Panama

2009-10-30T14:17:00.005-04:00

I arrived last night at Puerto Lindo, a small town on Panama's Atlantic coast that doesn't show up on Google Maps. Housed in a former two-story hotel (pictured) right on the beach is the headquarters of Open Blue Sea Farms, an aquaculture company founded by Brian O'Hanlon. Open Blue Sea Farms is on the forefront of offshore fish farming, a new segment of the aquaculture industry. O'Hanlon and his 30 employees are farming cobia, a white fish similar to haddock. The company is testing different equipment specifically designed for the rough conditions of the open oceans, including AquaPods from Searsmont, Maine-based Ocean Farms Technology.

In the photo: several stacks of triangular panels for a yet-to-be-built AquaPod sit in the yard in front of Open Blue Sea Farms' beachside HQ.

Open Blue Sea Farms is "over the horizon"

2009-10-16T08:18:00.004-04:00

Open Blue Sea Farms is "further offshore than any other farm in the world," Brian O'Hanlon, founder and president of the aquaculture company said in a Q&A with SeafoodSource.com.

The company is on the forefront of the aquaculture industry's move offshore. It gained experience raising cobia in the waters off Puerto Rico, but upped its game in August when it purchased Panama's Pristine Oceans, creating the largest open ocean aquaculture operation in the world. Open Blue Sea Farms is now farming cobia on the north coast of Panama, in Colon province. I will be traveling there at the end of this month as part of my fellowship from International Center for Journalists.

O'Hanlon says in the interview that the company has 50,000 fish in the water right now, but expects to add 200,000-plus over the next 12 months.

And despite the move in the United States to allow offshore fish farming in the Gulf of Mexico, O'Hanlon says it will be a while before any venture there will be profitable and that his attention is wholly focused on Panama for the time being.

Go to the Q&A from SeafoodSource.com >>

Editor: Don't believe anything you just read...

2009-10-15T07:58:00.007-04:00

I read an interesting article this morning in the Daily Observer, a newspaper in Monrovia, Liberia. The article, called 'Let's prioritize aquaculture,' caught my eye not because it said anything new about fish farming, but because the editor decided to end the article with a bang.

The article detailed a tour of Liberia's aquaculture operations by the country's director of the Bureau of National Fisheries, a Mr. Subah. This Mr. Subah spent the tour touting the benefits of aquaculture as a lucrative business that could feed and employ Liberians. He called it a viable economic venture and said the government would encourage farmers to become involved.

The unnamed reporter maintained an unbiased voice in the story. But the article ended with this rather doomsday-style note (emphasis mine):

Editor’s note: It should be made clear that aquaculture, which is widely practiced in the United States and other developed nations, has serious implications. The environmental impacts of fish farming can be devastating, destroying whole aquatic ecosystems. Some species of fish are invasive. It means that once introduced into a water body, they kill off all other fish species and take over, eliminating the natural variety that once existed and a food web that took millennia to evolve.

Liberia, being on the west coast of the continent of Africa, has a richness of sea food that should be guarded jealously. In this regard, fixing the broken system at the Free port of Monrovia, repairing the country's roads for better sea-to-market transport and creating a system that equips Liberian fishermen with the knowledge and tools to practice their trade responsibly and lucratively may prove to be more sustainable than rushing into an artificial system whose impact could be devastating and whose effects have already become evident elsewhere.

I bet Mr. Subah loved that epilogue to his aquaculture-love tour.

So much for reliable reporting. Some forms of aquaculture certainly have well-documented adverse impacts to the local environment, but accusing aquaculture of "destroying whole aquatic ecosystems" and "eliminating ... a food web that took millenia to evolve"? I would say those are not fair statements about aquaculture.

Also, the reporter claimed a fish farm on the bank of Liberia's St. Paul River had 5,000 species of fish, "including the African cat fish." Considering the fact there are only about 400 species of fish farmed around the world, I assume the reporter meant to say that there are 5,000 fish at this farm.

Go to the article from the Daily Observer >>

Malaysia pursues organic certification for aquaculture

2009-09-30T17:31:00.003-04:00

The Malaysian government is setting up an organic certification program for fish and shrimp farms in an effort to boost the country's aquaculture industry.

The head of the Malaysian Fisheries Department, Datuk Junaidi Che Ayub, said the organic certification program would help make Malaysia one of the leading organic fish and shrimp countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Go to the article from FIS >>

The question of organic aquaculture is a complex one. How can something be certified organic when the fish farmer can't control everything the farmed fish may eat or come in contact with? After all, food and other things can flow in and out of those aquaculture pens. It's a subject I'd like to explore further.

The UN's take on aquaculture

2009-09-27T22:13:00.004-04:00

I'm reading through the nearly 200-page report from the UN's Fisheries and Aquaculture Dept. on the state of the world's fisheries and aquaculture. Lots of interesting numbers in here.

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food-producing sector in the world. In the early 1950s, aquaculture produced roughly 1 million tons of farmed seafood. In 2006, aquaculture produced 51.7 million tons with a value of $78.8 billion, accounting for a 7% annual growth rate, according to the report.

As I've written before, Asia dominates the aquaculture industry. In 2006, the Asia-Pacific region accounted for 89% of the world's aquaculture production in terms of quantity and 77% in terms of value.

In 2006, harvesting food from the oceans, by commercial fishing and aquaculture, provided employment for an estimated 43.5 million people in the world, the report says.

There were 9 million fish farmers in the world in 2006, 94% of which were in Asia.

Humans are eating more and more seafood, but wild fisheries can't meet the demand. The majority (80%) of fisheries have no room for expansion. Here's the breakdown: In 2007, 28% of fishery stocks we either overexploited (19%), depleted (8%) or recovering from depletion (1%). A further 52% were fully exploited and leave no room for expansion. Only 20% of stocks were moderately exploited or underexploited with the possibility of producing more.

In 2006, 110 million tons of fish production was for human consumption. Most of the remaining 33 million tons of production was for the production of fish meal and fish oil.

I'm still working my way through the report and will continue to make notes of interesting figures I find.

The evolution of "watermen"

2009-09-19T11:15:00.008-04:00

The Washington Post published a story today about the recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that claims 50% of all seafood consumed in the world now comes from aquaculture. The writer, Juliet Eilperin, spoke with Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association. Belle said fish farming offers people the best chance to make a living from the seas. Belle also revealed some interesting demographics about Maine fish farmers.

"[Belle] noted that three-quarters of his group's members are either current or former commercial fishermen, and although the average age of Mainers with a fishing lease permit is 57, the average for those with a fish-farm permit is 33. 'It's really the next generation of watermen,' Belle said."

Belle's comments highlight the transition we're seeing from a commercial fishing-focused coastal culture to one with more emphasis on aquaculture. This transition from fishing to fish farming is fascinating to me, especially when it's compared to the transition humankind underwent on land almost 10,000 years ago from hunter-gathers to farmers. The latter obviously has had infinite implications for the world we live in today. What will the transition from commercial fishing (the last large-scale hunter-gather industry out there, as far as I can tell) to aquaculture mean for the oceans and for humankind? Maybe it's because I was an anthro major in college, but I find this question fascinating.

Go to the article from The Washington Post >>

Planning, planning, planning

2009-09-19T10:05:00.002-04:00

Had some time yesterday to really start planning my reporting trip to Panama and Mexico. One of the first frustrations is that I can't find Puerto Lindo, my destination in Panama, on any map. It's frustrating because it makes logistical planning difficult, but a part of me loves the mystery because it means I'm going somewhere off the beaten path.

As of now, the plan is to fly to Panama City and spend several days in country, visiting Puerto Lindo and an offshore aquaculture operation there. I also plan to speak with local fishermen there to explore the tensions that exist between fishermen and fish farmers. I know the tension exists here in Maine, but what does it look like elsewhere? From Panama I'll fly to Hermosillo, Sonora, and travel on to Guaymas by land. Guaymas is on the Sea of Cortez and is the site of a local aquaculture operation that is trying to farm shrimp offshore in AquaPods, steel-mesh, geodesic spheres designed to withstand open ocean conditions that are developed by a company here in Maine. I'll hopefully spend some time in Sonora talking with fishermen, as well.

When I first told Steve Page, the developer of the AquaPod, about my project, the first thing he asked was: "Do you dive?" Well, I don't at the moment, but yesterday I called up a local dive shop and was told there's a class starting next week. If I jump on it now, I'll be set for my trip in late October. Learning to dive is an expensive proposition, but it's well worth it, I think.

Maine aquaculture company gets first-of-kind lease to farm kelp

2009-09-15T15:07:00.005-04:00

Ocean Approved, a Portland, Maine-based aquaculture company, has received a lease to farm kelp on the floor of Casco Bay, according to Mainebiz, a statewide business news outfit in Portland, Maine. The company, which got its start farming mussels, claims the lease is the first-of-its-kind in the entire country.

What's interesting is that the company's co-owner, Paul Dobbins, holds kelp up as the epitome of sustainable aquaculture. "There is zero discharge. We don't feed it any fertilizer, and it's highly nutritious," Dobbins tells Mainebiz. "We see tremendous opportunity for growing vegetables that don't require freshwater, fertilizer or any arable land."

Go to the article from Mainebiz >>

Typhoon ravaged Taiwan's aquaculture industry

2009-09-13T14:17:00.027-04:00

Typhoon Morakot, the deadliest typhoon to hit Taiwan in recorded history, caused $126 million in losses for the country's aquaculture industry, according to the Taipei Times. Nearly half those losses came from grouper farming. The industry estimates it will take three years to reach pre-Morakot levels.

Go to the article from the Taipei Times >>

(photo caption: http://www.flickr.com/photos/abickel/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

New report: 50% of fish consumed globally comes from aquaculture

2009-09-12T16:53:00.002-04:00

A new study from a team of international researchers has determined that aquaculture now accounts for 50% of all fish consumed globally. The study, titled "Feeding aquaculture in an era of finite resources," also found that the growing aquaculture industry is putting strain on the wild fisheries that provide fish feed for the farmed fish. The findings were published in the Sept. 7, 2009, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, though behind a paywall, can be accessed here >>
Go to the press release reporting the study >>

Ocean Conservancy testifies before Congress

2009-09-12T16:07:00.004-04:00

Just days after the NOAA opened the doors for offshore aquaculture operations in the Gulf of Mexico, George Leonard, aquaculture program director at the Ocean Conservancy, testified before a subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Leonard called on lawmakers to provide leadership in the establishment of a regulatory framework for offshore aquaculture operations in federal waters. If the Congress fails to act, he warned, an unregulated offshore aquaculture industry would develop and lead to "severe" environmental consequences.

In his testimony, Leonard cited Chile as an example of what the United States should avoid. According to Leonard, Chile failed to set up a proper regulatory framework for aquaculture as the country's fish farmers increased production of Atlantic salmon by 2,200% from 1991 to 2006. This explosion in farmed salmon came at a cost. By 2007, Leonard says, too many salmon farms were packed too tightly together, resulting in the spread of disease that has led to a 50% decline to date in salmon production. Chile has lost 7,500 jobs from the fallout, Leonard says.

Read Leonard's complete testimony >>

NOAA to tackle regulating offshore aquaculture

2009-09-12T14:44:00.002-04:00

Last week, while I was at the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., prepping for my fellowship, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced its intent to develop a national policy for sustainable aquaculture in federal waters.

A national policy for how to deal with offshore aquaculture may get rid of some of the uncertainty in the industry and allow it to grow in this country.

The NOAA's move was instigated by a proposal from the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council to allow fish farms in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The council had forwarded the proposal to NOAA for approval. Rather than approve or reject the proposal, the NOAA allowed the deadline to pass, meaning the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council's plan is allowed to take effect by default. Getting any fish farms up and running in the gulf will still take a while though, according to the Houston Chronicle. In the meantime, the NOAA will work on setting up a regulatory framework.

The response was immediate. Christopher Mann, senior officer at the Pew Environment Group, issued a statement the same day calling the NOAA's decision a "recipe for disaster." The Ocean Conservancy called it a "dangerous precedent."

Go to the NOAA press release >>
Go to the article from the Houston Chronicle >>
Go to the article from The New York Times >>
Go to the statement from the Pew Environment Group >>
Go to the statement from the Ocean Conservancy >>

This blog's genesis

2009-09-12T12:26:00.002-04:00

In July 2009, I received a fellowship from the International Center for Journalists to cover the aquaculture industry's move offshore. As a journalist in Maine, my initial interest in the story was how the changing aquaculture industry was affecting fish farmers in my state. But as I learned more about aquaculture in this country and around the world, and how the evolving industry may change the face of our oceans, I realized there was a much larger story to tell.

I'll use this blog to trace my progress on the project, which will take me from the salmon pens along the coast of Maine to offshore aquaculture operations in Panama and the west coast of Mexico. My reporting will bring me face to face with the fish farmers and the commercial fishermen who supply this world with seafood, the global demand of which has doubled over the past few decades. I'll explore the history of aquaculture, and what moving offshore -- from net pens close to land to giant cages miles off the coast -- means for the industry. I also hope to explore the industry's impact on commercial fishermen, the oceans and humankind.

The project's genesis came in the form of a press release from Ocean Farm Technologies, a company in Searsmont, Maine, that manufactures large (up to nearly 92 feet in diameter) geodesic spheres that hold thousands of farmed fish. The AquaPod, as the company named it, is one of the first systems designed specifically for farming fish in deep water, where the seas can be rough and the currents strong.

An AquaPod being deployed in South Korea (courtesy/Ocean Farm Technologies)

The company's press release announced its recent sale of AquaPods to an aquaculture company in Guaymas, Mexico, that will use them to farm shrimp in the Sea of Cortez and to a company in South Korea that will farm cod in the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean. I had known about the World Affairs Journalism Fellowship from the ICFJ and had been keeping an eye out for international stories that had significance for Maine readers. I immediately called Ocean Farm Technologies' owner, Steve Page, to learn more about the company and how it fits into the larger story of aquaculture. What I found out from Steve was that while he was having success selling his AquaPods to aquaculture companies around the world, he couldn't sell one in his own backyard. The reason is that the United States lacks any regulatory framework to license aquaculture operations in federal waters, which stretch from three to 200 miles off the coast. Steve's opinion is that the government is dragging its feet because the aquaculture industry is not a favorite of the environmental lobby or commercial fishermen. This lack of framework means investors for the most part have targeted other countries for offshore aquaculture operations. Aquaculture is growing in developing countries at six times the pace of developed countries. Steve says that uncertainty is the only reason the industry hasn’t taken off in the United States. There are interested investors, interested companies, he says, “but simply no process to obtain a permit in federal waters.”

Meeting the growing demand for seafood is a controversial subject. Commercial fisheries have already been fished to the brink of collapse. Traditional aquaculture, which includes onshore and near-shore operations, already supplies more than half the world’s seafood, the majority of that coming from China and other Asian countries like Japan and South Korea. Near-shore aquaculture faces strong criticism for its negative impact on local ecosystems, from the build-up of fish waste in shallow waters, and its clashes with commercial and recreational uses. Therefore, many marine experts, Steve included, agree that moving the aquaculture industry offshore is the only way to meet the growing global demand for seafood. In deep water, strong currents will wash away the fish waste and will be out of site of land. However, offshore aquaculture has its share of skeptics. Some fear the privatization of the oceans. Others question the sustainability of the industry. Fish like cod and salmon are carnivorous and require fish feed that includes other fish, herring for instance. How can an industry claim to be sustainable, they argue, while it depletes one fishery to save another?

The complexity of the subject is intense and I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried about getting it all right. But there has to be a beginning somewhere, and this is mine.

-Whit