Aquaculture Industry Research Thrives in New Hampshire
WASHINGTON, April 6 – The next time you order seafood you may want to ask whether it is wild or farm-raised because with aquaculture still in its infancy in most of the United States, much of the seafood consumed in the United States. is imported from countries where it is farm-raised.
“American consumers are enjoying more seafood every year, but to a large degree the increase in consumption is not coming from the wild,” said Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee’s National Ocean Policy Study, during a hearing on offshore aquaculture on Thursday.
“We are getting a great deal of this increase from overseas, and much of the increase in imports comes from fish farms far from the reach of U.S. environmental regulations,” he said.
According to Sununu, over the past three years more than a billion pounds of shrimp have been imported each year, Atlantic salmon imports have doubled and tilapia imports have tripled.
The purpose of the hearing was to study the growing of fish in cages in the ocean, [an alternative to importing most of the nation’s seafood. The committee is studying how to control and promote this industry. Without regulation, seafood can be imported with toxins, which is why the committee is interested in the creation of U.S. fish farms that could be regulated by federal law.
“The United States lags behind a dozen nations, including and as far away as China, Norway and Australia, and as close as Mexico and Canada, in developing offshore aquaculture,” said Sununu, who along with other members of the committee has concerns about the environmental and health repercussions.
One of the witnesses at the hearing was Richard Langan, a proponent of aquaculture and the director of the University of New Hampshire’s Open Ocean Aquaculture Program. The goal of the university program, which began in 1997, is to further develop commercial aquaculture throughout New England, to create employment opportunities and to contribute to community and economic growth, according to the program’s Web site.
“Our project is looking at species that are native to our area, shellfish and finfish, and we sort of had a very early success with shellfish, in particular mussel culture; we saw that we had excellent production capacity,” Langan said after the hearing. “We went out and did an economic assessment of it, and that came back very favorable, so we’ve done a great deal of outreach to fishermen in New Hampshire.”
Langan said that the program also is assisting a New Hampshire fisherman with a commercial start-up in New Hampshire waters. The program hopes that the fisherman is successful so other local fishermen will attempt aquaculture projects.
Langan said mussel culture can be done part time to supplement regular fishing. “We’re not asking someone to replace their fishing activities; it’s something they can do in conjunction with fishing, so we think there’s real economic opportunity there, for fishermen who can continue to use the boats that they already have,” he said.
However, he said, for finfish there is still a way to go. “I think we still need a couple more years to answer some biological questions in terms of getting better growth rates,” said Langan, whose program is looking at some small cage systems and studying if they will pay off economically.
“In terms of whether it’s a large company producing seafood off the coast of New Hampshire or a small-scale commercial fisherman producing it, I think there’s going to be some combination of direct benefit for New Hampshire citizens, plus they’re going to have a nice local supply of fresh, high-quality seafood,” Langan said.
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