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UNH to tackle fish farming in open ocean

Portsmouth, New Hampshire --- Off the coast of New Hampshire near the Isles of Shoals, University of New Hampshire (UNH) researchers will launch an aquaculture demonstration project in May to explore the biological, engineering, and economic feasibility of raising summer flounder and blue mussels in the open ocean.

The project will also address some specific environmental issues, said UNH Associate Sea Grant Director Brian Doyle, who explained that "open ocean" refers to "anyplace where you're exposed to open ocean conditions," even if the site is relatively close to shore.

"The audience we're looking to appeal to could be aquaculture entrepreneurs or commercial fishermen looking for supplemental business," said Rich Langan, Director of the UNH Jackson Estuarine Laboratory. The demonstration project is funded by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration through the year 2001, but, Langan said, "We're hoping that this becomes a long term R&D site that could be used by regional institutions and regional groups that want to test different types of gear and different types of species of fish and shellfish."

Five miles/eight kilometers off the Isles of Shoals, engineers will erect two net pens in 180-foot/55-meter deep waters. The pens are especially designed for open ocean conditions. One will be submerged at a depth of 50 to 66 feet/15 to 20 meters; the other will be partially submerged, so researchers can study how both systems work. In June, each will be filled with about 3,000 summer flounder now being reared at GreatBay Aquafarms in Portsmouth. Mussels will be grown on two submerged longlines near the finfish cages.

Project organizers hope the flounder will reach market size by early November so they can be harvested before cold weather sets in. "They're not an ideal species for us because they won't take the winter temperatures that we expect here," said UNH Zoology Professor Hunt Howell. Summer flounder are being used because they are available, but, he said, "Our expectation is we'll switch species as time goes on."

"This is a relatively new species for aquaculture," said George Nardi, President of GreatBay Aquafarms. "We're not 100 percent sure what to expect after they're stocked out there."

Coastal sites scarce

For years, people in the Gulf of Maine have reared fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants in land-based and coastal aquaculture facilities. Salmon farming is a multimillion dollar industry in Downeast Maine, and both New Brunswick's and Nova Scotia's provincial governments include departments of "Fisheries and Aquaculture." Interest in aquaculture continues to grow as market demand for a fresh, reliable supply of seafood increases, and as declining wild stocks force increasingly stringent closures on Gulf of Maine fisheries.

Portsmouth Fishermen's Coop Manager Peter Kendall anticipates strong interest in the demonstration project among coop members who will maintain the pens and the fish. "In past years when they could make money fishing, only one or two guys might be interested in [participating], whereas with all these regulations coming up you might find a lot of guys willing to go out and do it just to make a day's pay," he said.

As aquaculture spreads in the Gulf, it joins fishing, recreation, and other uses competing for space along the coast. "The reason we're looking at offshore aquaculture to begin with is that there are virtually no protected inshore sites on the coast of New England, so if aquaculture is gong to expand, it's going to have to expand offshore," said Howell. The demonstration site is not in prime fishing areas or shipping lanes, Langan noted.

But open ocean aquaculture presents challenges not found on fish farms closer to shore. Waves can reach heights of up to 30 feet/nine meters at the project site, said Langan, who observed, "Nothing like that's been experienced in Maine or maritimes aquaculture."

Warnings urge caution

While aquaculture proponents emphasize its economic benefits, others are concerned about its environmental repercussions. The Environmental Defense Fund, which published a 1997 report, Murky Waters: Environmental Effects of Aquaculture in the United States, urges caution and careful management to prevent long-term environmental losses that bring economic consequences of their own. Rebecca Goldburg, EDF Senior Scientist and one of the authors of Murky Waters, said EDF has helped to draft proposed organic certification standards for aquaculture that address environmental concerns.

Goldburg, a self-described "fan of bivalves," applauds the mussel cultivation part of the UNH program, stating that shellfish aquaculture generally has fewer environmental effects than marine finfish farming. But she is not opposed to finfish aquaculture. "It is possible to build a net pen facility at an experimental scale where finfish are grown with seaweeds or bivalves to absorb nutrients. That's the kind of project that I think should be pursued."

Many concerns about marine aquaculture arise in regard to inshore salmon farming, though some of those issues raise questions for cultivation of other species in net pens. Scientists say nutrient pollution from fish feces and uneaten food can smother benthic communities below the pens and also cause algal blooms that deplete oxygen needed by organisms in the water. Environmental groups worry about the effects on the marine environment of biocides used to kill fish parasites and of antibiotics used to prevent disease.

In an attempt to deal with aquaculture concerns on a Gulf-wide basis, the Gulf of Maine Council last fall established an Aquaculture/Environ-mental Committee of resource managers, industry representatives, and community members to discuss such issues as environmental monitoring, disease regulations, and research.

Some environmental issues addressed

"We have been looking at some aspects of the negative impacts of aquaculture, particularly on benthic communities. We have experiments designed to look at that question," said Doyle, but he explained that the project's focus is on feasibility, not on investigating numerous specific environmental issues. UNH is soliciting research proposals from other scientists, however, and Doyle said he hopes some of those proposals will examine other environmental questions.

One concern that the UNH project has addressed directly, according to Langan, is its potential effects on sea turtles and marine mammals. To prevent entanglement in net pens and other gear, Langan explained, no small diameter or loose lines will be used. "Everything is going to be under tension, so the possibility of a turtle flipper or whale fluke getting tangled up in lines or nets is minimal." UNH will not use acoustical deterrents or "noisemakers" to keep seals away from the site. The devices have been known to cause other marine mammals to avoid their usual travel routes. Langan expects the taughtness of the net pens to deter seals from trying to break in.

Doyle and other UNH project organizers also emphasized that the project is undergoing state and federal environmental permitting processes and will comply with any applicable environmental regulations. But existing regulations are not necessarily designed to address issues specifically relating to open ocean aquaculture.

Even so, Howell said he's confident pollution will not be a problem. "It's an issue when you have massive production sites in inappropriate locations. For us, it's only a couple of pens so there are going to be relatively few fish, relatively little food, deep water, and strong currents." Goldburg acknowledged that the demonstration project would probably have little effect on its surrounding environment, but surmised any resulting commercial scale projects would be much larger. "All net pens take a Ôdilution is the solution to pollution' approach," she said, asserting that global air pollution has proven that idea false.

Another issue that plagues salmon aquaculture is the problem of fish that escape from pens and then compete with wild salmon for food and spawning habitat, and spread disease and parasites among wild stocks. Scientists also note that the offspring of wild salmon that breed with farmed salmon don't have the genetic programming they need to migrate to spawning rivers.

Goldburg advocates domestication of aquaculture species much as other farmed livestock are domesticated, which involves breeding them "over a number of generations for economically desirable characteristics." Domesticated animals are less likely to survive and breed in the wild. Nardi and other project organizers maintain that the summer flounder used in the demonstration project shouldn't present any genetic threat to wild stocks because they are the direct offspring of wild parents caught in the region.

"This project will hopefully demonstrate how an aquaculture operation done correctly, can be a good neighbor," said Nardi. "It can be a part of the coastal environment that's productive, creates jobs, and can be done in a manner that's not detrimental to the environment or the other user groups."