Aquaculture: Policy and Possibilities

Aquaculture: Policy and Possibilities

00:00:00 (John Sheehan)
Follow me along in the puzzle for a minute. The United States is a huge market for seafood. But despite having millions of square miles of coastline and ocean access, we import at least two thirds of the seafood we consume. Now of that two thirds, half of that seafood: mostly shrimp and salmon is farmed as opposed to being wild caught. This is called aquaculture.

00:00:25 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
There are dozens and dozens of species that are cultured. Think of oysters, clams, and mussels, shrimp, and crayfish, fish like trout, catfish, salmon, and even plants of seaweed like kelp.

00:00:36 (John Sheehan)
U.S. aquaculture production is relatively tiny especially again considering those millions of miles of ocean. And it has stayed constant over the last twenty years. By contrast, other countries’ aquaculture production has increased many fold. And we are buying it.

00:00:53 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
By consuming so much imported seafood I would argue that we’re missing out on the benefits of local production: creating jobs here growing seafood under our laws and regulations.

00:01:03 (John Sheehan)
So, why can’t the U.S. use aquaculture to make up the gap between our hungry demand and the large amount of seafood that we’re importing?

00:01:11 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
It’s complicated.

00:01:13 (John Sheehan)
Yeah. This is Dive In with NOAA Fisheries. I’m John Sheehan. And today I’m talking with Doctor Michael Rubino, NOAA Fisheries’ Senior Advisor for Seafood Strategy and formerly the director of the Office of Aquaculture. He’s been thinking a lot about these issues, about farmed seafood’s place in the greater industry, how technology and innovation have made it safer and more sustainable. And recently he published an article about aquaculture policy considerations outlining some opportunities and challenges facing it. Doctor Michael Rubino, welcome to Dive In with NOAA Fisheries. Thanks so much.

00:01:47 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Glad to be here with you.

00:01:48 (John Sheehan)
So, why should Americans get on board with aquaculture? What is so great about farming seafood rather than wild caught?

00:01:56 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Well, they’re both important. They’re part of a spectrum of technologies to produce seafood from pure hunting to pure farming and a variety of technologies in between. For example, take the salmon hatcheries on the west coast where the salmon are grown in a hatchery, which is a form of aquaculture for the first part of their life. And then they’re released into the environment. You know, I think in addition to growing more and more here at home, the other concerns or issues from a public policy perspective that have emerged in the past several years are concern about public health and nutrition, and the important role that seafood plays accelerating climate change. And then the disruptions that the Coronavirus caused in our markets. All three of those are prompting a reassessment of the role and potential of aquaculture in the U.S.

00:02:41 (John Sheehan)
So, let’s start with nutrition. Americans are not eating as much seafood as they should be or could be. And yet our seafood production has kind of maxed out.

00:02:51 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Federal nutrition guidelines are urging Americans to double their seafood consumption. So, to go from one meal a week per person per capita to two meals a week. You know, where is all that seafood going to come from? We’ve done a great job of putting off all of our wild stocks under management and rebuilding programs in the U.S. But even that’s not enough to supply our current seafood needs let alone doubling seafood consumption. So really, we have a choice. We can continue to import more and more seafood largely from aquaculture, or we can grow more of it here.

00:03:22 (John Sheehan)
And from a policy standpoint, how is climate change driving the conversation towards aquaculture?

00:03:28 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Well, climate change is putting stress on all of our food systems. In some places fish stocks are in decline because of changing composition or temperature, or alkalinity of the water. Crab in Alaska is on the verge of a shutdown this year for example because the numbers are so low. So, what aquaculture does is it expands the supply options. Certainly, the aquaculture industry is not immune to climate change. But its’ got a little bit more flexibility to respond by adapting species, technologies, locations, to new climatic conditions. Take the example of Maine, or New England in general. You know, there are no lobsters left in Long Island. They’ve all moved up to Maine. So, fishermen in Maine are doing very well at the moment but there’s a fear that lobsters with the temperature gradient moving up the coast are going to move further north to Canada, or to deeper water offshore where it’s colder. So, the State of Maine from a policy perspective has really looked at what are other ways to make a living on the water. And you’ve got fishermen, and especially sons and daughters of fishermen, and others in coastal communities being trained in oyster, clam, mussel, seaweed farming.

00:04:33
In some ways it’s a hedge against the future. But also, to contribute to you know, local seafood supply and to keep all those working waterfronts going.

00:04:40 (John Sheehan)
And isn’t aquaculture more sustainable environmentally than say some forms of terrestrial agriculture?

00:04:48 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Yeah. I’d like to use the word “efficiency” from a couple of perspectives. So, aquaculture is one of the most efficient ways to produce protein. So, it uses up very little space. It’s an efficient use of water and feed. Some forms of aquaculture like mollusks, oysters, clams, mussels, and seaweed don’t require any food at all. They actually take excess nutrients out of the environment. So, given its low carbon footprint and efficient use of resources, aquaculture is increasingly viewed as part of you know, a food systems strategy designed to reduce or mitigate the effects of climate change.

00:05:21 (John Sheehan)
And lastly you mentioned the supply chain issues that were sort of laid bare by the pandemic. How can aquaculture be a solution?

00:05:30 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
I think if we can think back two years to the spring of 2020, COVID turned our world upside down. All of the sudden restaurants, trades shut down and the U.S. seafood industry was particularly hard hit because it depended so much on the restaurant trade and on exports. About forty percent of U.S. wild catch is exported either to markets overseas, or overseas processing. So, shut out of restaurants people turned to supermarkets. And forms of seafood that supermarkets sell: canned tuna fish, frozen seafood as well as fresh farmed salmon continued to keep coming. So, seafood consumption in 2020 actually went up even though both wild capture and aquaculture in the U.S. producers were really had hit with revenues down anywhere from ten to eighty percent. It really forced the industry to think about their whole supply chain.

00:06:23
Where are the supply options? And where is it coming from? We’ve heard a lot about re-shoring manufacturing. Well, the same applies to seafood. Can we grow more here at home? Can we make better use of our wild catch? So, that whole discussion is going on. And aquaculture could play a big role there.

00:06:40 (John Sheehan)
So, I think you can make the case very well that farmed seafood is very, very good for us. In a lot of ways, it’s very good for the environment. And it can be a real boon to local economies. So, why don’t we have more of it?

00:06:53 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
It’s complicated. So, let me run through a few reasons. You know, I think with a few regional exceptions like catfish and crawfish, and some of the southern states, or oyster farming in the northwest of Virginia, Americans haven’t really embraced seafood farming. We haven’t made room for it in our neighborhoods. And you know part of it is that most people don’t know what aquaculture is. We all grow up learning about farm animals and reading books to our kids about the family farm. But very few people know what an oyster farm or a fish farm looks like. Or that much of the seafood they buy or eat at restaurants is farmed. Another challenge is what I’ve been calling “the new kid on the block” issue. How do you make room in especially our coastal and marine environments for another use? You know, we’ve got prime real estate, vacation homes, recreational boating, fishing, shipping, energy uses, sewage outfall, protected areas, national defense areas. You know, you think of the ocean as a big place. But especially in coastal areas it’s pretty crowded.

00:07:52
Other reasons are that I think aquaculture, like any human use can be done well or poorly. And it has been done poorly in some parts of the world. So, some of the environmental groups fear that these unsustainable practices that they’ve seen elsewhere might occur in the U.S. Fishermen for their part understandably fear that aquaculture might yet be another ocean use like offshore wind energy, constraining their ability to go out there and fish, or pull their nets. And any other new seafood that’s produced could compete with their product. So, there’s that issue. And then finally the one issue that is brought up a lot about aquaculture is that the regulatory environment is complicated. You know getting a permit for a new farm requires federal, state, local, town permits, all kinds of approvals to secure access for site especially in public waters. So, all of that takes time, it’s an uncertain process, it’s costly. You know in all fairness to all these levels of government involved it’s important to have rules and requirements. Any activity has to secure permits.

00:08:56
But its’ been a real constraint on aquaculture.

00:08:59 (John Sheehan)
So, lets talk about a few of those challenges starting with environmental concerns. What are the issues that environmental groups raise about aquaculture?

00:09:07 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Well, the key environmental issues at aquaculture are waste discharge, particularly for fed aquaculture like fish and shrimp. Because aquaculture species are one of the few species where we’ve still got healthy wild stocks, unlike terrestrial agriculture. And we need to be careful about the whole genetics issue in terms of escapes. And then aquaculture can also in terms of gear it can snag or ensnarl turtles, or whales, or endangered species. At least there’s the fear of that. Another issue that’s been raised is a fair number of so-called forage fish, or small species of fish are caught ground up into fish meal or fish oil and fed to pigs, to chickens, and to salmon and shrimp. There’s only so much of those species of menhaden and sardines, and so-on around the world to go into fish meal and fish oil. And so, there’s a concern that feeding fish to fish will put additional stress on wild capture fisheries.

00:10:02
So, a lot of work has been done in the past twenty, thirty years. A lot of lessons learned about mismanagement practices in terms of addressing all these environmental issues and concerns. You know, if you put an aquaculture in the right place then the waste becomes food in the environment and you’re not over-taxing the environment. If you’re careful about your genetics or you use sterile animals, you don’t have to fear escapes. If you’ve got gear type that will break off, or you locate in places that aren’t migration routes for whales then you avoid that issue. And on feeds a huge amount of work has been done over the past twenty years to look at what are called alternative feeds. They’re a whole variety of other ingredients that can mimic the nutrients in fish meal and fish oil. So much work has been done on that, that really this dependence upon fed aquaculture on forage fish, that dependence has really been broken. So, that’s really a success story on the science side.

00:10:58 (John Sheehan)
And what would you say to fishermen that worry that these new aquaculture farms could be chipping into their business?

00:11:06 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Well on the one hand anything competes with center of the plate at home or a restaurant. U.S. seafood, because we live in a global marketplace, prices are really set by global seafood prices rather than domestic seafood prices. I think fishermen are increasingly realizing and the fish wholesalers and processors in the United States are realizing that they need a variety of supply sources to put U.S. seafood back on U.S. plates. Another issue that’s been raised is how do you maintain working waterfronts? If you don’t have enough fishing activity working waterfronts turn into more areas for recreational boating, sailboats and the like. Also important to the economy but it means that fishermen have to go further and further to get to a port that has fish processing facilities or places to repair boats. If you’ve got seafood farmers out there as well using the same facilities, it gives another reason to keep all those facilities going.

00:12:04
So, I think there’s a lot of collaboration around the country now between fishing groups and aquaculture groups on working waterfront issues.

00:12:10 (John Sheehan)
And how about on the regulatory side? You mentioned that yes, there need to be rules but is there a way to make the process easier for a potential aqua culturist?

00:12:21 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Well as I said on the one hand, we’ve got this comprehensive suite of environmental requirements that’s really state of the art in terms of stewardship responsibilities that federal, state and local agencies have in terms of use, especially using public waters. That makes it complicated but the agencies both at the federal and state level have done a lot of work especially over the past ten years to coordinate the process, to provide best available scientific information. We’ve got a variety of monitoring evaluation reporting protocols. All of that is pulling in the direction of making the process more efficient. The other thing we’ve done is what might be called coastal marine spatial planning. In other words, figuring out where the best places to do aquaculture are that minimize conflicts. Part of that involved looking at all of the other uses of that marine environment. And my colleagues within NOAA have developed a product called Ocean Reports that as a spatial mapping tool where you can draw a rectangle anywhere in the U.S. ocean and within two seconds get thousands, and thousands, and thousands of data layers about the uses in that area.

00:13:26
Everything from some of the geo-chemical to biological characteristics of the area to the depths, the currents, as well as all the various human uses in terms of shipping lanes or military areas, or fishing pressure. And you can use that information then to sit down with fishermen or state and federal agencies, or the military, or shipping companies to sort of do an optimization of finding those places that are best for aquaculture but that minimize the conflicts. The next part of that process then is to do not just a stakeholder dialogue but also the environmental review for those areas in advance of any permit applications coming in so that each company doesn’t have that burden of proof of having to do a full-blown environmental impact assessment. A lot of the information has already been gathered in advance. You still have to do a review of that particular project. The idea is that it would take a lot less time and energy and money to do it project by project when you’ve done it for the area as a whole up front.

00:14:24 (John Sheehan)
Yeah. Instead of putting the onus on say maybe a less funded potential farmer the government is saying “here’s all these resources up front before submitting that application”.

00:14:34 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
That’s right. And it’s also being used for offshore wind energy at the moment. The social reports tool. The agency NOAA has worked on identifying and working with stakeholders on identifying two so-called opportunity areas in the Gulf of Mexico as well as in southern California. Same process has been used for the first wind energy areas identified in the Gulf of Mexico. And the process has gotten very high remarks from fishing groups who were involved in both processes for aquaculture and for wind energy.

00:15:04 (John Sheehan)
And finally, how can we address something that you referred to as social license? Meaning sort of social acceptance of aquaculture. What are some thing we can do to sort of tackle the public’s perception?

00:15:15 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Well, I think outreach and education is one. There’s nothing like going out and seeing an oyster farm or a fish farm up close, firsthand. That’s a great way to demystify what this is all about. To see that there are actually people involved in the whole process, and we’re good stewards of the environment. I think few people know, for example, that we’ve had salmon farms in Maine for over thirty years. And they’ve gone through a learning process. But now those farms are all in appropriately sited facilities, they’ve got underwater cameras for feeding, the genetics has all been worked out with NOAA and Fish and Wildlife Service and state agencies. The sites are fallowed between crops. In other words, they’re left empty for several months so the bottom environment in the ocean can recover. There’s biosecurity measures in place to try to avoid pathogens and sea lice. So, it’s really a state of the art sort of modern, efficient, sustainable, responsible production environment.

00:16:13
Another example is a fish farm off the big island of Hawaii which has been operating now for ten years in so-called open ocean. It’s not offshore offshore federal waters, beyond three miles. But it’s in an open ocean situation, high energy environment. It’s in the middle of a whale sanctuary. And it has operated meeting all the environmental requirements put upon it for over a dozen years now as well. And recently got a permit to expand its operations. That’s a situation too where local community has come to see that as our neighbors, our fish farm. Local boat captains for recreational fishing like to go out there because the pens also act as fish aggregating devices. It's a good place to fish. And both the fishermen as well as the operator of the farm look out for each other. I think one more thing in terms of public perception, and that’s to recognize that aquaculture is also a tool for restoration. Its become very important in terms of restoring oyster reefs. It has long been important on the west coast for enhancing runs of salmon both recreational and commercial fishing as well as restoring runs for endangered salmon.

00:17:20
And it’s now used to restore abalone on the west coast, which is threatened and endangered. And to grow corals in a hatchery to outplant on reefs that are stressed. As I said, there’s nothing like having real live examples in our midst to learn about what this is about.

00:17:37 (John Sheehan)
So, Michael I think we’ve established that there are quite a few opportunities despite a lot of challenges with aquaculture. How do you see things progressing?

00:17:47 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Well, we have a small but vibrant and growing aquaculture community in the United States. And we have thirty years of lessons learned to build on. As I mentioned, aquaculture is increasingly viewed as important for nutrition, for local jobs, for climate-ready food systems, for collaboration between wild capture and aquaculture to put U.S. seafood back on U.S. plates. So, going forward aquaculture is you know increasingly viewed not as a problem but actually part of a solution to these challenges. And the future is really quite bright.

00:18:20 (John Sheehan)
Doctor Michael Rubino thanks so much for talking with me.

00:18:22 (Doctor Michael Rubino)
Thanks for chatting today. I enjoyed it.

00:18:25 (John Sheehan)
Doctor Michael Rubino is NOAA Fisheries’ Senior Advisor for Seafood Strategy. You can learn a lot more about the latest news and developments in aquaculture at our website fisheries.noaa.gov and check back here for more on U.S. seafood in upcoming episodes. I’m John Sheehan and this has been Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.

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