By Cliff White, Editor
Published on Thursday, September 01, 2016
A collaboration between Mexican governmental agencies and marine aquaculture firm Earth Ocean Farms is aiming to improve the plight of the totoaba, an endangered fish valued in Asia for its supposed medicinal properties.
Officials from Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) and National Commission of Aquaculture and Fishing (CONAPESCA) released 15,000 totoaba hatchlings raised at Earth Ocean Farms into the Sea of Cortez on Thursday, 25 August, with the goal of recovering the depleted numbers of the species. The public restocking event took place in the Santispac Beach, Bahia Concepcion, Mulege, Baja California Sur.
According to Earth Ocean Farms, the totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) is an endemic species to Mexico that was once abundant in the waters of the Sea of Cortez and is now being bred and cultivated in a sustainable manner by the company, which has a hatchery and farms located in La Paz.
“This restocking project is part of an innovative plan for the recovery of the totoaba, create jobs, and diversify the state’s economy,” the company said in a press release.
Mexico’s Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Rafael Pacchiano Alamán said in a statement he was encouraged by the collaboration between government and industry on behalf of the environment.
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Offshore fish farms could soon be raising native species in Gulf of Mexico waters.
Beginning in early February, commercial marine farmers can begin seeking permits from the National Marine Fisheries Service, an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
A rule issued Jan. 11 authorizes NOAA Fisheries to issue up to 20 Gulf aquaculture permits for waters at least nine miles from Florida’s gulf shoreline. That apparently includes waters north of the Florida Keys.
No fish farms will be permitted in Gulf waters protected by the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary or Everglades National Park.
The aquaculture proposal was endorsed by the federal Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council. NOAA staff has worked on the plan for more than five years.
“Examples of allowable species include red drum, cobia, jacks, snappers and groupers,” says an aquaculture summary.
“As demand for seafood continues to rise, aquaculture presents a tremendous opportunity not only to meet this demand, but also to increase opportunities for the seafood industry and job creation,” NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan said in a statement.
Currently there are no other commercial finfish or shellfish operations operating in federal waters.
“Expanding U.S. aquaculture in federal waters complements wild harvest fisheries and supports our efforts to maintain sustainable fisheries and resilient oceans,” Sullivan said.
Hawaii has “open-ocean aquaculture technologies, including submersible cages” in its state waters.
Species raised in Gulf of Mexico farms must be native species in case of escape or intermingling with wild populations.
Concerns raised previously about offshore aquaculture have focused on possible pollution and spread of fish diseases to wild populations. The NOAA report says those situations will be continuously monitored, and operations must avoid sites considered as essential habitat.
Previous attempts to raise snapper commercially in enclosed water bodies in the Keys have not proven financially feasible.
According to federal estimates, Gulf fish farms have the potential to raise nearly 13 million pounds of food fish annually.
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SAN DIEGO – Some 90 percent of seafood consumed by Americans is imported – a fact that the Obama administration vowed to start turning around by expanding fish and shellfish farms into federal waters.
Yet nearly two years since the first permit was issued, the United States still has no offshore farms.
The pioneers of offshore aquaculture say their plans have stalled or been abandoned because of the long and expensive federal permitting process that requires extensive environmental monitoring and data collection.
The applicant given the first permit for federal waters in 2014 has spent $1million and not seeded any mussels off Southern California. Another pioneer in Hawaii said there is too much red tape and plans to start his fish farm off Mexico and export to the U.S.
Meanwhile, investors are leery to jump on board with no offshore farms in the water.
“Those jobs could have been in the U.S., the investment could have been in the U.S., but there was no way I could talk to my board of investors when there are no clear regulations set up and the monitoring burden is so ridiculous,” said Neil Sims, CEO of Kampachi Farms.
“I’m now practicing my Spanish,” said Sims, who received his permit for pens off Hawaii. He had hoped to develop a commercial operation to raise sashimi-grade Kampachi fish but plans instead to put his farm off Mexico’s Baja California peninsula next year.
He said the Mexican process was rigorous but streamlined.
Federal officials say the red tape is partly because it’s a new frontier. There is no regulatory framework for federal waters. They say the process needs to be streamlined while maintaining environmental standards.
Nearly half of the imported seafood Americans eat comes from foreign farms, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
A draft of NOAA’s five-year strategic plan calls for marine aquaculture production to jump 50 percent by 2020, and expanding into federal waters is key. Crowded coastlines with recreational boats and shipping routes are limiting growth in state waters.
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On January 1, 2015, Ocean Farm Technologies and OceanSpar merged to form InnovaSea Systems, Inc., a new company committed to developing the next wave of innovative, open-ocean products and services to support the growing mariculture industry.
“It’s going to take considerable design and engineering talent to create the next generation of products for open-ocean mariculture. The combined resources of OceanSpar and Ocean Farm Technologies give InnovaSea the horsepower to get the job done,” said Steve Page, the founder of Ocean Farm Technologies. “I’m delighted that our companies have joined forces.”
The newly merged company champions, among other things, environmental and financial sustainability and innovation. Its commitment to producing innovative products and services is reflected in the significant investment InnovaSea is making in an accelerated research and development program.
“While both companies made good progress in the past, this merger allows us to move faster and on a larger scale,” said Gary Loverich, OceanSpar’s co-founder. “We are investing a considerable amount of time and money in hiring the right people and acquiring complex computer technology because we believe in the future of open-ocean mariculture.” Both Loverich and Page, veterans in product design, will assume advisory roles at InnovaSea.
InnovaSea’s strong foundation comes from the expertise of two respected companies in the mariculture industry. Founded in 2005, Ocean Farm Technologies developed the Aquapod, a unique containment system that handles rugged ocean conditions and a variety of species. OceanSpar has produced quality products, like the SeaStation and AquaSpar Fish Pens, since 1988. They share an excellent reputation for producing cost-effective goods and services, and a commitment to supporting sustainable fish farming in the open ocean.
“InnovaSea will continue offering the same high-quality products, operating equipment, and support. That won’t change,” said InnovaSea’s new president, Langley Gace. “We are taking a more holistic approach by turning our attention to creating fully integrated farming platforms. Our customers told us that they need support through the grow-out cycle—from the moment juvenile fish leave the dock until they are on the harvest vessel heading to the processing plant— and we listened.”
To learn more about InnovaSea Systems, Inc. visit InnovaSea.com.
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Giant cages float off the shores of Hawaii, housing hundreds of thousands of yellowtail snapper in the deep waters of the Pacific.The so-called Hawaiian Kampachi spend about one year in their net pens before they’re put on ice and sold to restaurants and wholesalers in the United States and abroad. They are a rare breed: the product of one of the few open-water fish farms in the United States.They may not keep that status for long. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is on the verge of setting a regulatory system and allowing as many as 20 permits for farms in the Gulf of Mexico, in what supporters hope is the seed of a nationwide industry.”I hope that inside of a year that we will have filed an application for a commercial permit for the Gulf,” Neil Sims, founder of Kampachi Farms, said in a recent interview. “That is a fervent hope, but I don’t think it’s an irrational hope.”
If finalized, NOAA’s proposed rules will open up federal waters to finfish aquaculture for the first time. To proponents like Sims, it represents the success of reason over fear. But to some environmentalists, it is a rash decision that could damage a Gulf already suffering from a spate of misfortunes, from hurricane damage to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
In part, the debate stems from perspective. Should the ocean be farmed like the land, with fish instead of livestock? And if so, how sustainable is sustainable enough?
Officials at NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service said the growing U.S. population forces action. The vast majority of seafood Americans eat comes from other countries — and as often as not, it’s farmed.
“The question we have in the U.S. and the question we’ve had for a while is: Do we continue to import more and more seafood, or do we try to grow more?” said David O’Brien, deputy director of aquaculture for NMFS. “As an administration and NOAA, specifically, we have said, ‘Let’s find a way to make sustainable aquaculture happen.'”
It’s an uphill battle. The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council first approved an aquaculture plan in 2009 and sent it to NOAA to implement and create regulations. Amid lawsuits and congressional opposition, the policy languished.
NOAA finally proposed regulations to implement the plan earlier this year and recently reopened the comment period through Nov. 28. This time, opposition — while still present — is noticeably more subdued. Some environmental organizations have moved on to other priorities; others have tempered their opinions.
The Ocean Conservancy, which once sued NOAA over the Gulf plans, is not “actively” working on the issue, said George Leonard, the group’s chief scientist. But it is still opposed to the Gulf plan “on principle.”
“Our approach has always been framed as a ‘right from the start’ approach,” he said in a recent interview. “If we get the framework right and we get the laws right, then aquaculture can be and should be part of our seafood future.”
Fishing or agriculture?
Beyond the ideological debate is a legal one. Does NMFS have the statutory authority to oversee aquaculture?
NMFS sees it as a form of fishing, consequently falling under the nation’s top fisheries law, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
In its proposed rule to implement the Gulf plan, the agency cites the Magnuson definition of fishing as “the catching, taking or harvesting of fish.” Then it turns to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to back up its assertion that aquaculture qualifies as harvesting — “the act or process of gathering a crop” — and thus is fishing.
Environmentalists and food safety groups don’t see it that way. They argue that Magnuson was set up for wild fisheries and does not apply to what is essentially agriculture on the sea.
“I think it’s completely illegal,” said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition. “Magnuson does not control aquaculture.”
Cufone, who once worked for Food and Water Watch, pointed to a list of risks, including fish escapes and pollution. The Center for Food Safety is on the same side of the debate, releasing a report last month that tallies up the problems in aquaculture around the globe, including farms losing more than 24 million fish (Greenwire, Oct. 21).
Their view is partly one of food safety: Finfish aquaculture, the groups contend, is not good for consumers. The industry cannot completely control the inputs in farms open to the sea, for one. Farmed fish are also currently fed wild fish, which threatens wild populations.
But the Ocean Conservancy takes a more nuanced view. Though NOAA shouldn’t be moving forward with a piecemeal plan in the Gulf, Leonard said, the United States should develop a nationwide plan for how the country will implement aquaculture. Such a framework could map out farm locations, set environmental safeguards and lay out industry expectations.
The problem: Congress, so far, has shown little interest. Bills to establish a regulatory system have failed to gain any real momentum in the past.
“We spent four years or so trying to articulate the national standards we thought were appropriate,” Leonard said. “We couldn’t get the political support to pass that, and part of that is because it’s just not high on Congress’ priorities list, and the other part is there’s quite a lot of disagreement” among stakeholders.
Don Kent, president of Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, said he has become “cynical” about the prospect of a national framework, particularly before a U.S. industry exists.
“These people who say we need a grand plan, what they’re really saying is, ‘Let’s just put this onerous thing out there that has to be done first,'” Kent said.
In Kent’s view, NOAA’s Gulf plan is a good, albeit imperfect, first step. But he also acknowledged that it was a “little cumbersome” because of the agency’s adherence to a fisheries law designed to manage wild stocks of fish.
“I think what should happen is, we should move forward, taking opportunities like the Gulf plan as a necessary first step in the Gulf and then learn what we can from that,” he said. “There’s been so much rhetoric about aquaculture, good or bad, I think it’s time for people to see a real model for it.”
Broadly, the Gulf’s Fishery Management Plan for Regulating Offshore Aquaculture would set up a permitting system for aquaculture, effective for 10 years and then renewable in five-year increments. Permit holders would be allowed to maintain an offshore facility, as well as a hatchery.
Species would be limited to those that are native to the Gulf and managed by the region’s fishery management council — a requirement designed to limit the effect of potential escapes.
Farms also would be prohibited in protected areas and required to be no closer than 1.6 nautical miles from another farm. The proposed rule also sets standards for when farms have to report everything from fish escapes to marine mammal entanglements.
Cufone said such restrictions don’t eliminate the inherent danger in fish farms.
“Ocean aquaculture has been problematic globally for many years. There have been numerous issues with fish escapes and pollutions and chemicals in the process,” she said. “To even contemplate doing that in the Gulf of Mexico is ridiculous. There’s been enough trauma there in recent years.”
‘Let’s move forward’
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Kampachi Farms’ Sims. With an Aussie accent and enthusiasm that reaches across phone lines, he is a fitting spokesman for the finfish aquaculture movement.
Sims began raising yellowtail off Kona, Hawaii, in 2005, aiming to prove the industry could be environmentally friendly. He sold the farm in 2009, during an unprofitable year. Today, he co-owns a farm in Mexican waters — drawn, he said, by a more supportive government.
But he contends that the Hawaiian farm, now owned by Blue Ocean Mariculture, demonstrated that fish farms can be sustainable. The Gulf, he said, is another opportunity to showcase the industry’s potential.
“Let’s move forward,” he said. “We desperately need the seafood, we desperately need the jobs, we desperately need to be able to show consumers and coastal communities that we can do this in a responsible and scalable fashion.”
Sims has continued testing out fish farm technologies in federal waters off Hawaii, getting one-year federal permits for a small-scale cage that houses about 2,000 fish. The Velella Project has tried unanchored cages, towed by a 65-foot schooner.
The aim was to try out a way to minimize the effect of such free-drifting farms on the environment, with the mass of fish constantly moving in deep waters. Sims asserts that biologically it was successful, with more fish surviving and less impact. Now his research team is testing ways to automate feeding in order to lessen the at-sea footprint.
But Sims also argues that deep-ocean fish farms have already proved their environmental safety. He and other supporters point to a 2013 technical memorandum from NOAA that puts deepwater aquaculture in a mostly positive light. Citing data on fish farms, the paper provides guidelines for minimizing negative effects.
With more than 100,000 fish in a cage, for example, nitrogen and phosphorus can build up. But the NOAA paper concludes that there are “no measurable effects 30 meters beyond the cages when farms are sited in well-flushed waters.” In other words, farms in deep waters with a current are better than those near shore.
The paper also addresses concerns over chemicals, citing data that show marine fish farms have drastically reduced their use of antibiotics, therapeutants and anti-foulants in favor of vaccines and better management.
But some environmentalists — who contend that such pollution is still a concern — said finfish aquaculture is also not a solution to ramping up the world’s seafood supply.
That’s because farmed fish are fed wild fish. One kilogram of the yellowtail farmed by Blue Ocean Mariculture, for example, takes 2.3 kilograms of wild fish meal and fish oil.
“It’s a system set up for collapse,” said Lisa Bunin, the Center for Food Safety’s organic policy director. “What we really need is to think for the long term.”
Fish farmers said technology is still advancing on fish feed, pointing to soy as a potential replacement. Sims said he has been testing out a diet based on soy that eliminates fish meal from the diet of yellowtail snapper. The quality of the resulting fillets is indistinguishable — at least according to him and his employees, who do their own taste tests.
“If we’re going to grow the aquaculture industry,” he said, “we can’t do it on Peruvian anchovies.”
The Center for Food Safety’s October report — co-written by Bunin — declares soy “unsuitable fish feed.” Not only is it not natural to the marine environment, Bunin said, but it is also not easily digestible for fish.
“There isn’t really alternative types of feed,” she said. “The soy industry tried to rise to the occasion, and it couldn’t.”
Regulatory loophole
So what’s the solution to the United States’ well-known “seafood deficit”?
Americans import as much as 90 percent of their seafood. While some of that is re-imported American seafood, thanks to a convoluted trade, most admit that as the country’s population grows, wild seafood cannot support its appetite.
NOAA’s solution is testing out the possibility of sustainable open ocean aquaculture. But Cufone of the Recirculating Farms Coalition argues that land-based, closed-system aquaculture is the answer, at least in part.
Her group advocates for “recirculating” aquaculture, where fish are raised in tanks and their waste is used to fertilize crops. Such systems can run on renewable energy, like solar, and be built in urban environments.
“We farm everything else,” she said. “We farm vegetables and fruit and other animals. But we really have a lot of challenges with fish. A part of that is people have this image of the fishermen going out there and catching their dinner.”
Whether the United States embraces that approach, ocean aquaculture or another future technique remains to be seen. But even if NOAA fails to expand federal waters aquaculture under its watch, the industry may move forward without it.
Thanks to a quirk in federal laws, commercial aquaculture farms can bypass NOAA and obtain permits from the Army Corps of Engineers if they farm fish that aren’t federally managed. O’Brien said two commercial operations recently went through that process to receive the first-ever permits for aquaculture in federal waters, albeit for shellfish, which are less controversial than finfish.
Kent of Hubbs-SeaWorld has also begun going through that process. He plans to raise yellowtail snapper off California, in federal waters, using the regulations that exist today.
“If I wanted to build an oil rig offshore, it’d be a defined process,” he said. “For this, it’s sort of a regulatory blank state. We’re trying to lay out a process that’s very visible and very transparent so people can see it.”
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Photo courtesy of Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute
BY: CLARE LESCHIN-HOARCONNECT | OCTOBER 8, 2014 Voices of San Diego | voiceofsandiego.org
America’s running a deep seafood deficit.
We control more ocean than any nation in the world – a whopping 2.8 billion acres – yet we import 91 percent of the seafood we eat.
But if Don Kent, president and CEO of Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute, gets his way, a big part of the solution will be floating four and a half miles off the sands of Mission Beach, and it will mark a significant milestone in the nation’s efforts to cultivate seafood.
Dubbed the Rose Canyon Fisheries Sustainable Aquaculture Project, a partnership between Hubbs and private equity firm Cuna Del Mar, it will be the first commercial offshore fish operation in the United States. The term “offshore” means the farm will sit beyond the three-mile mark typically regulated by the state, but still within federal waters.
The sheer size of the project – 29,000 square meters, or about six football fields — means it will be the first and most ambitious offshore operation of its kind. The project will start with half-a-million yellowtail the first year, with the ability to scale up to 10 million fish per year (5,000 metric tons) at full capacity.
The vision for Rose Canyon has been in the works for at least a decade. In 2004, Kent explored the idea of placing an aquaculture site near a decommissioned oil rig. But the rig didn’t stay decommissioned for long. Later, in 2009, Kent tried to secure permits to place a cage system off of La Jolla, but that project eventually floundered too.
Others have experimented with offshore farming in the U.S. In 2012, aquaculture pioneer Neil Sims tested an “aquapod” of kampachi off the coast of Hawaii. And in January, the California Coastal Commission OK’d the first offshore commercial shellfish ranch near Long Beach.
But so far, obstacles have thwarted offshore farming from taking off in America.
Efforts to develop strong federal regulations to guide and develop offshore aquaculture have been slow to non-existent. And then there are the technical challenges: pen designs that can withstand constant ocean beating, plus the logistics of getting farm staff, fish feed and fish themselves to and from the site without breaking the bank.
Kent says the technical problems have been resolved.
“We’ve got the technologies. We know how to do these things. It really comes down to the regulatory climate and the uncertainty that comes with it.”
Michael Rubio, who heads aquaculture efforts for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says offshore is the new frontier in aquaculture, which makes Kent, the son of a Utah sugar beet farmer who fell in love with the ocean, a sort of aquacowboy.
“Technology for offshore aquaculture is going from pilot projects to implementation around the world,” Rubino told me. “So from a regulatory perspective, we’re working to get ready in the United States. For state waters, several states like Maine, Hawaii, and Washington State have a fairly well-defined permit programs for fish farming. But for federal waters (3 to 200 miles offshore), we have not yet clarified what federal permits are needed for fish farms.”
Under current U.S. fisheries laws, aquaculture has mostly been interpreted as fishing, even though farming fish uses different techniques than catching fish.
But California has no state regulations in place for fish farming, and because Kent will be cultivating yellowtail, a species that does not fall under federal management, he doesn’t need a special permit to raise the fish.
The project requires plenty of other permits, though. Hubbs submitted project permit requests this week to a half-dozen regulatory agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the California Coastal Commission and NOAA, which will review the Rose Canyon Aquaculture proposal. The process is expected to take 12-18 months, and if it gets a green light, will take an another two years to produce its first harvest.
♦ ♦ ♦
Kent, 63, has spent his entire career at Hubbs, joining the staff in 1980. The Rose Canyon project could very well be his career capstone.
He’s been actively engaged in conversations with commercial and recreational fishermen, and even shifted the farm’s proposed location so it wouldn’t get in their way.
He’s been in talks with local San Diego businesses, including Chesapeake Fish Company, about the idea of using the scraps they generate as feed; and Acacia Pacific Aquaculture about using cultivated algae. He’s reached out to UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, hoping to get them to breathe new life into their existing aquaculture program. Kent says the academic infrastructure that supports California animal husbandry for cattle and poultry is less robust for aquaculture. There’s not a lot of incentive to develop a career as a fish nutritionist, or to focus on species that have cultivation potential, nor for engineers to design better technology for the aquaculture industry, when there’s no booming industry to support them. Kent says academic support to provide strong job candidates will be important.
“When I was in graduate school in the 1970s, aquaculture was the hot thing. UC Davis built the Bodega Laboratory. UC Santa Barbara was working heavily on it; there was a lot going on in Humboldt, the Sea Grant program was very oriented around aquaculture. A lot of people were working on a lot of species. It was an exciting time,” Kent said. “Then it went to the wayside. And now what happens is the guy who is the viral expert at UC Davis retires, and they say, ‘You know, I’m not sure we’re going to get another new fish virologist.’”
Kent is also addressing the environmental concerns that have dogged aquaculture’s reputation as a whole. He has solid and compelling answers to all the typical questions about pollution, escapes and the sustainability of the feed.
California yellowtail are native to the region, so should they escape, it’s less of a concern than if Kent were growing a non-native species. And, said Kent, production won’t eat into local fishermen’s hauls.
“Fishermen don’t like aquaculture interfering with their market. The salmon guys are always uptight about salmon farmers. Yellowtail for the hamachi trade is all farmed, and it’s all farmed somewhere else. So we’re not displacing a commercial catch — we’re displacing a commercially imported fish that’s farmed,” he said.
And because juveniles will not be taken from the wild and raised – that’s the controversial way bluefin tuna is farmed – recreational fishermen who cast for yellowfin won’t be impacted.
For San Diego, the project could mean as many as 40 new jobs when you factor in some of the non-farm jobs like processing the fish and making fish food.
There’s no getting around the fact that a farm growing 10 million fish a year will produce an impressive amount of effluent (we’re talking fish-poo here), but Kent said the project’s location over the ocean’s sandy bottom should mean currents can take care of that. That’s important because a fish farm can impact whatever it’s located over – a sensitive habitat, coral reefs, etc. And the plans for Rose Canyon show cages will be placed away from marine vessel traffic — another perpetual concern.
That’s not likely to dissuade environmental groups like Food and Water Watch that warn “commercial, scale open ocean aquaculture will neither ease pressure on collapsing wild marine fish populations, nor eliminate our seafood trade deficit.” Plus, there’s the looming taint of Hubbs’ connection to SeaWorld and its highly publicized killer whale controversy.
But there has been a noticeable shift in attitudes about aquaculture. The “all farmed seafood is bad” mantra is waning, and many believe industry players who are farming seafood responsibly and transparently should be rewarded for those efforts.
Dr. George Leonard, chief scientist for Ocean Conservancy, opposed Kent’s 2009 attempt, but he said there appears to be proactive engagement happening with Rose Canyon. Still, regulations will be crucial to protecting the environment, Leonard said.
“This is a single, relatively large farm in federal waters where there’s still not a comprehensive regulatory framework in place, so the policy concerns that Ocean Conservancy had in 2009 still remain,” he said. “We have yet to chart a nationwide path for a sustainable offshore farming industry, but that larger issue is outside of Hubbs’ control. … In the absence of such a framework, we ought to make sure the Hubbs project embraces the strongest conservation principles possible so it contributes positively to our future seafood supply.”