By JIM KOZUBEK
New Hampshire Union Leader Correspondent
Ocean-going AquaPods have been deployed in Panama, Puerto Rico, Mexico and South Korea.
An artist's rendering of a deployed AquaPod, where tens of thousands of fish could roam the ocean under the power of electric motors or tethered to ships above. The cages could leave shore with lab-hatched fingerlings and return in 18 months with fat fish ready for market. (OCEAN FARM TECHNOLOGIES)
PORTSMOUTH – GreatBay Aquaculture, LLC, a land-based fish hatchery, is moving into the business of offshore aquaculture off the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire.
GreatBay has applied for a $135,000 grant from the Maine Technology Institute to buy an AquaPod, a 62-foot diameter, 3,250-square-meter geodesic-shaped cage of polyethylene and wire mesh made by Ocean Farm Technologies, Inc. of Searsmont, Maine.
Teeming with up to 25,000 fin fish, the cage could roam federal waters -- three to 200 miles offshore -- under the power of electric motors. The cages would leave shore with lab-hatched fingerlings; the five-gram, three-inch babies would return in 18 months as fattened fish ready for market.
"It is a coming together of technology and a scarcity of supply," said GreatBay cofounder and chief technology officer George Nardi, of offshore aquaculture. "The market for white fish is growing and the supply has reached a plateau. We are not seeing catches increase."
A third of worldwide fish stocks are now overfished or near extinction, while consumption doubled from 1973 to 1997, said the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Economists call it the "tragedy of the commons," a case of a dwindling resource that has an effect of hardship on those who cannot afford a higher price, such as $30 or $40 per pound for wild salmon.
But now, fisheries are creating open-ocean farming technologies to usher in a Blue Revolution of the seas, promoting aquaculture as a means to meet nutritional needs.
"Aquaculture provides more seafood for consumers and can therefore reduce dependency on wild fish populations, so indirectly it may aid in stock recovery," said Richard Langan, director of the Open Ocean Aquaculture Project at the University of New Hampshire.
Surface net pens
Near-shore surface net pens, cylinder-shaped nets that hang from frames floating on the surface of the ocean, have been in use since the 1970s.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in a report last year said the near-shore aquaculture market is $70 billion, with U.S. markets representing $1 billion. Eighty percent of U.S. fish intake is foreign-grown.
090104AQUAPOD_200px
Ocean-going AquaPods have been deployed in Panama, Puerto Rico, Mexico and South Korea.
Complex factors have kept surface net pens from being used in much of New England.
Seaside residents complain fish farms are an eyesore. This has pushed aquaculture northward, but going too far north deters fish farming since waters are colder. It leaves mid-coastal Maine for aquaculture, Nardi said.
GreatBay grows Atlantic cod, flounder, black sea bass and Cobia fingerlings for sale to fish farmers in New England, the Southeast, China, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Five years ago it partnered with Cooke Aquaculture, Inc. in Sorrento, Maine to grow 200,000 cod in 65-foot-deep net pens.
Nardi said his company now sees enough economic potential to go out on its own as a fish farmer.
GreatBay, a 10-employee company, set up a fish farm at Searsmont, Maine at Penobscot Bay last year and will pull its first harvest of 25,000 cod in August.
Deep water aquaculture
Nardi now wants to use submersible cages to venture deeper into the ocean to start commercial, offshore fish farms, which would be among the first introduced in the United States.
Ocean Farm formed in December 2005 and began selling AquaPod in 2007 with a sale to a farm in Puerto Rico, three sales to farms in Panama, three sales in South Korea and one in Mexico.
GreatBay could deploy the first AquaPod for commercial use in New England in June in Searsmont.
Developed in part by Cliff Goudey of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the AquaPod can retreat to depths of 100 to 200 feet, defusing objections that fish farms are unsightly and enabling farms to gain acceptance off the shores of New Hampshire, Nardi said.
"A submersible cage does not come into conflict with residents, and below the ocean the fish don't feel the waves and weather, so you protect your investment," Nardi said.
Safe from the chop of ocean waters, a submerged, mobile farm can reduce damage to the sea floor as well as free fish from fouled water and low-dissolved oxygen content, he said.
"Open ocean, deep water aquaculture reduces environmental impact because of greater currents, mixing of nutrients and less deposition on the sea floor," said Steve Page, founder and CEO of Ocean Farm.
Much like the concept of the Ocean Drifter -- a 270-foot diameter mobile cage Goudey began to develop earlier this decade -- the AquaPod is created to roam the seas like an underwater ranch, powered by twin, eight-foot, 6.2-horsepower propellers that churn through the water like big screws.
A submersible electric motor is powered by cables connected to a diesel generator on a ship overhead, but alternative options are being explored. Resolute Marine Energy, Inc. is working to adopt its wave-power generator as a source of electricity to create an energy-autonomous, remote-controlled AquaPod.
The first offshore farm
Nine miles off the coast and somewhere near the Isle of Shoals at a depth of 180 feet, University of New Hampshire's Open Ocean Aquaculture Project in 2003 set up a contraption that looked like an underwater leviathan.
An electronics-crammed buoy blinked on the surface of the water. Three submerged pods swayed in the water, anchored to the sea floor with a steel chain. Inside the pods grew flounder, Atlantic cod, black sea bass and nori, an inedible seaweed, from 2003 to 2005.
GreatBay was a partner in the venture to use SeaStation, an 80-foot diameter cage made by OceanSpar, LLC of Bainbridge, Washington, for the first open-ocean aquaculture farm.
Backed by a $249,000 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant for a second trial from 2006 to 2008, the project showed that offshore aquaculture could be economically viable. Now as technology enables roving aquafarms to take to the seas, Nardi wants to show offshore farming can go commercial.
"We want to do this on our own to show offshore aquaculture can be successful in this state," Nardi said.
Farm-raised in the wild
The National Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2007 proposed regulations for aquafarms in federal waters three to 200 miles offshore before it sputtered. The U.S. Congress is now looking at legislation to give the U.S. Department of Commerce authority to set regulations, opening federal waters to development.
GreatBay wants to begin testing AquaPod in Penobscot Bay to ensure it can operate the device and use it offshore if and when regulations are set.
Some groups see offshore aquafarms as a large-scale agribusiness that could harm the livelihood of local fisherman, introduce pesticides to the water and create environmental damage.
Nardi said aquaculture can show local fishermen how to "supplement their income." He argues the feed conversion of 1.1 pounds of fish oil, anchovies and soy protein to grow each pound of Atlantic cod in an aquafarm is preferable to rates for livestock, such as two pounds of feed to produce one pound of chicken.
The use of vegetable proteins to supplement aquaculture can reduce potency of Omega-3 fatty acids; some argue the breeding of a faster-growing, meatier fish has consequences similar to breeding pressures on beef that result in less nutritious meat and more at-risk stocks.
NOAA says that since 1990, more than a million farmed-raised salmon have slipped the barriers of farms into Puget Sound and its tributaries. They were apparently gobbled up by predators or too docile and ill-equipped to survive the open ocean on their own.
New Hampshire Union Leader Correspondent
Ocean-going AquaPods have been deployed in Panama, Puerto Rico, Mexico and South Korea.
An artist's rendering of a deployed AquaPod, where tens of thousands of fish could roam the ocean under the power of electric motors or tethered to ships above. The cages could leave shore with lab-hatched fingerlings and return in 18 months with fat fish ready for market. (OCEAN FARM TECHNOLOGIES)
PORTSMOUTH – GreatBay Aquaculture, LLC, a land-based fish hatchery, is moving into the business of offshore aquaculture off the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire.
GreatBay has applied for a $135,000 grant from the Maine Technology Institute to buy an AquaPod, a 62-foot diameter, 3,250-square-meter geodesic-shaped cage of polyethylene and wire mesh made by Ocean Farm Technologies, Inc. of Searsmont, Maine.
Teeming with up to 25,000 fin fish, the cage could roam federal waters -- three to 200 miles offshore -- under the power of electric motors. The cages would leave shore with lab-hatched fingerlings; the five-gram, three-inch babies would return in 18 months as fattened fish ready for market.
"It is a coming together of technology and a scarcity of supply," said GreatBay cofounder and chief technology officer George Nardi, of offshore aquaculture. "The market for white fish is growing and the supply has reached a plateau. We are not seeing catches increase."
A third of worldwide fish stocks are now overfished or near extinction, while consumption doubled from 1973 to 1997, said the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Economists call it the "tragedy of the commons," a case of a dwindling resource that has an effect of hardship on those who cannot afford a higher price, such as $30 or $40 per pound for wild salmon.
But now, fisheries are creating open-ocean farming technologies to usher in a Blue Revolution of the seas, promoting aquaculture as a means to meet nutritional needs.
"Aquaculture provides more seafood for consumers and can therefore reduce dependency on wild fish populations, so indirectly it may aid in stock recovery," said Richard Langan, director of the Open Ocean Aquaculture Project at the University of New Hampshire.
Surface net pens
Near-shore surface net pens, cylinder-shaped nets that hang from frames floating on the surface of the ocean, have been in use since the 1970s.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in a report last year said the near-shore aquaculture market is $70 billion, with U.S. markets representing $1 billion. Eighty percent of U.S. fish intake is foreign-grown.
090104AQUAPOD_200px
Ocean-going AquaPods have been deployed in Panama, Puerto Rico, Mexico and South Korea.
Complex factors have kept surface net pens from being used in much of New England.
Seaside residents complain fish farms are an eyesore. This has pushed aquaculture northward, but going too far north deters fish farming since waters are colder. It leaves mid-coastal Maine for aquaculture, Nardi said.
GreatBay grows Atlantic cod, flounder, black sea bass and Cobia fingerlings for sale to fish farmers in New England, the Southeast, China, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Five years ago it partnered with Cooke Aquaculture, Inc. in Sorrento, Maine to grow 200,000 cod in 65-foot-deep net pens.
Nardi said his company now sees enough economic potential to go out on its own as a fish farmer.
GreatBay, a 10-employee company, set up a fish farm at Searsmont, Maine at Penobscot Bay last year and will pull its first harvest of 25,000 cod in August.
Deep water aquaculture
Nardi now wants to use submersible cages to venture deeper into the ocean to start commercial, offshore fish farms, which would be among the first introduced in the United States.
Ocean Farm formed in December 2005 and began selling AquaPod in 2007 with a sale to a farm in Puerto Rico, three sales to farms in Panama, three sales in South Korea and one in Mexico.
GreatBay could deploy the first AquaPod for commercial use in New England in June in Searsmont.
Developed in part by Cliff Goudey of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the AquaPod can retreat to depths of 100 to 200 feet, defusing objections that fish farms are unsightly and enabling farms to gain acceptance off the shores of New Hampshire, Nardi said.
"A submersible cage does not come into conflict with residents, and below the ocean the fish don't feel the waves and weather, so you protect your investment," Nardi said.
Safe from the chop of ocean waters, a submerged, mobile farm can reduce damage to the sea floor as well as free fish from fouled water and low-dissolved oxygen content, he said.
"Open ocean, deep water aquaculture reduces environmental impact because of greater currents, mixing of nutrients and less deposition on the sea floor," said Steve Page, founder and CEO of Ocean Farm.
Much like the concept of the Ocean Drifter -- a 270-foot diameter mobile cage Goudey began to develop earlier this decade -- the AquaPod is created to roam the seas like an underwater ranch, powered by twin, eight-foot, 6.2-horsepower propellers that churn through the water like big screws.
A submersible electric motor is powered by cables connected to a diesel generator on a ship overhead, but alternative options are being explored. Resolute Marine Energy, Inc. is working to adopt its wave-power generator as a source of electricity to create an energy-autonomous, remote-controlled AquaPod.
The first offshore farm
Nine miles off the coast and somewhere near the Isle of Shoals at a depth of 180 feet, University of New Hampshire's Open Ocean Aquaculture Project in 2003 set up a contraption that looked like an underwater leviathan.
An electronics-crammed buoy blinked on the surface of the water. Three submerged pods swayed in the water, anchored to the sea floor with a steel chain. Inside the pods grew flounder, Atlantic cod, black sea bass and nori, an inedible seaweed, from 2003 to 2005.
GreatBay was a partner in the venture to use SeaStation, an 80-foot diameter cage made by OceanSpar, LLC of Bainbridge, Washington, for the first open-ocean aquaculture farm.
Backed by a $249,000 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant for a second trial from 2006 to 2008, the project showed that offshore aquaculture could be economically viable. Now as technology enables roving aquafarms to take to the seas, Nardi wants to show offshore farming can go commercial.
"We want to do this on our own to show offshore aquaculture can be successful in this state," Nardi said.
Farm-raised in the wild
The National Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2007 proposed regulations for aquafarms in federal waters three to 200 miles offshore before it sputtered. The U.S. Congress is now looking at legislation to give the U.S. Department of Commerce authority to set regulations, opening federal waters to development.
GreatBay wants to begin testing AquaPod in Penobscot Bay to ensure it can operate the device and use it offshore if and when regulations are set.
Some groups see offshore aquafarms as a large-scale agribusiness that could harm the livelihood of local fisherman, introduce pesticides to the water and create environmental damage.
Nardi said aquaculture can show local fishermen how to "supplement their income." He argues the feed conversion of 1.1 pounds of fish oil, anchovies and soy protein to grow each pound of Atlantic cod in an aquafarm is preferable to rates for livestock, such as two pounds of feed to produce one pound of chicken.
The use of vegetable proteins to supplement aquaculture can reduce potency of Omega-3 fatty acids; some argue the breeding of a faster-growing, meatier fish has consequences similar to breeding pressures on beef that result in less nutritious meat and more at-risk stocks.
NOAA says that since 1990, more than a million farmed-raised salmon have slipped the barriers of farms into Puget Sound and its tributaries. They were apparently gobbled up by predators or too docile and ill-equipped to survive the open ocean on their own.
