There's great potential in the United States because we have so much water that ranges from
American Samoa in the Pacific to the Virgin Islands that are
federal waters that could be farmed.
Just offshore of New Castle [New Hampshire], we have a small site that grows sugar kelp,
steelhead trout, blue mussels, and this year we'll have a few sea scallops.
Early on, when we were trying to grow fish here, our experiments were focused on trout behavior.
Fishermen would stop by and say, "Hey, what are you doing with those sea pens? What's in
there?" And we'd show the trout and that's where we decided that this might be something for them.
I'm Ward Byrne. I'm the captain and owner of the vessel Sugar Daddy. I lobster fish, I tuna fish,
and as of the past two years I've been involved with the UNH AquaFort steelhead trout program.
I had no idea what I was getting into, but I said "yes" and I'm glad I did.
The partnerships we're trying to develop with the lobstermen and with the local industry - the
working waterfronts - it is crucial. They're stakeholders in the environment.
We would love to work very closely with them to introduce this technology, to introduce
training, and it's the wider community that we're wanting to work with. So,
they are the forefront of the working waterfronts within New Hampshire.
And so we started to look into the permitting process. But, in this case,
EPA stepped in and said, "Well, we have concerns about nutrients from the fish going in this river,
and this river already has too many nutrients." We went back to the chalkboard,
scratched our heads a little bit, and said, "Well, if nutrients is what they're concerned about,
what can we grow in addition to the trout that could pull those nutrients out of the water?"
The fish nets are inside the floating platform. The perimeter of the platform,
we can put in these lines that have weights, and then we create this biological curtain
around the fish that then are eating the organic and the non-organic elements that
that are being released by the fish. For every ton of fish we produce, we have to produce
three ton of kelp or mussels or combination both. It becomes a nitrogen neutral model.
So, we had done this for a while and and we enjoyed it and it worked and we got most of
the kinks out and we're thinking about what are we going to do next. Maybe we should try
something different? And we're about to - maybe, I wouldn't say we were closing down the farm, but we
were going to try something else. That's when someone came running down the pier and said,
"Hey! We want to buy this fish in bulk because it's amazing!" And we had just, um,
we never considered the fact that the fish was good. We just wanted to grow it and see
if we can get a clean, nice product out there and deliver it to market.
Trout are very robust, they're temperature tolerant, they grow quickly, and when grown in
sea water the flavor is spectacular. And all the fish that we brought to market sell quickly, and
people are always looking for more once we have harvested the cages. This platform was built in
the mind that it was a size and scale and it could be located in an area where fishermen could stop
by on their way to the fishing ground to feed the fish and then as they came back from a long day at
sea, could stop and maybe do some maintenance or harvest the fish and bring them to marketplace.
The key here has been that this is a local thing, that this is something that's
born and raised in New Nampshire - never leaves the state. It [the fish] hatched in Ossipee,
New Hampshire. It came down, we took it out to the farm, we fed it a very nice,
clean diet. We took care of them, they lived in a natural environment.
We harvest them in a very humane and clean way. Two hours later, they're in the store.
Fishermen have interest in this, but they want to look at how much
time commitment's involved, how challenging it is,
the ups and downs of it, and then financially, at the end of the day, are they going to make money.
Growing anything in the ocean is challenging. There's a very harsh environment,
there are all sorts of rules and regulations to follow, and we're just chipping away at it. Every
successful harvest or every conclusion of a harvest, it's another victory.
A lot of the fishermen and my friends see my posts on Facebook usually once a week
when we do a harvest, or out there I'll do a post. And,
you know, they saw the fish and I think October 21st of 2020, we stalked them. And they saw them
when they were small. There was a lot of questions and then now they see them, like, you know, "Wow!"
If they can see the value of this and then hopefully one day maybe
have their own little farm and do this, and/or
their sons and daughters come up and will have their own farm at some point in time too.
We can make it work. We can find this economics. We can produce
something sustainable to just supplement their incomes.
If this thing, you know, could take off, I think it would be huge. You know, I think it is taking
off. So, in seven months transform these fish into a food and it's pretty good, it's really good.
If you look at New Hampshire, we have a very small coastline. You go to Maine:
beautiful coastline lots of islands where you have areas
that are semi-protected. That's where this really has a lot of opportunity to go to.
Hopefully we're going to grow this to a movement, and hopefully deploy it in
other parts of the world, and be incredibly satisfying to go to the Caribbean nation and
just walk in there and see what they're growing and see how they're experiencing the concept.
I think currently in the United States it's challenging to grow fish in cages. And not that
aquaculture is perfect, you know, every industry has its issues, but we're trying to do it the best
way possible here. And I think there are great ways to do it, but you just have to do it right.
I believe it's sustainable in the right conditions. A lot of farm fish have a bad
reputation and these are not. You know, there's no junk in these pellets that we feed the fish.
It would be something to be really proud of to be able to grow fish and bring them from
local waters right to the table - so locally - it'd be pretty cool.
Hopefully we'll see more of this in coastal New England and hopefully
we'll have more steelhead trout and mussels on our plate when we go out to the restaurants.