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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 2
October 2007
Aquaculture: Let’s try to keep an open mind
Mention fish farming in a room full of commercial fishermen and you are bound to set off a few tempers.
Most fishermen view aquaculture warily as a potential and unwanted competitor for both market and bottom. And many of us have heard stories of the damage improperly managed large-scale aquaculture operations can do to fish habitat and wild populations.
But as several stories in this month’s Commercial Fisheries News illustrate, aquaculture is not always the natural enemy of the fishing industry. If properly sited, vetted, and managed with input and oversight from commercial fishermen and the public, emerging aquaculture technologies may someday play an important role in sustaining healthy fish and shellfish resources and even in revitalizing depleted ones.
The urchin hatchery project in Lubec, ME and the Zone C Lobster Hatchery in Stonington are two examples of this potential. The goal of the growers at the R.J. Peacock Canning Co. is to hatch and care for urchins until they’re large enough to survive in the wild and then, “let Mother Nature do the rest of the work.”
The Zone C Lobster Hatchery is two years into a long-term project focused principally on learning whether hatchery-reared lobsters can be used to replenish once productive, but now depleted, lobster bottom.
The lobster hatchery concept is not a new one, but as our story on pioneer John Hughes and his once thriving hatchery on Martha’s Vineyard points out, proving any tangible benefit of lobster seeding has long been an elusive, seemingly unattainable, goal.
However, advances in genetics research now allow scientists to make a proof-positive match between a hatchery-reared lobster and the brood mother and egg from which the juvenile was hatched. The urchin growers are using fluorescent dyes to achieve the same kind of tracking of cultured urchins once they’re released.
Will this science ultimately prove that hatchery-reared lobsters and urchins survive and thrive in the wild? The truth is it will take years more to know for sure. But if these techniques work, it may be possible to convince regulators and funders that these kinds of stock enhancement projects are worth supporting.
Elsewhere in New England, our story on New Hampshire-based GreatBay Aquaculture’s cod hatchery program and forthcoming growout trials makes it clear that commercial cod culture – from egg to market size – is on the move in the Northeast.
Commercial fishermen could look at this as competition. But some Martha’s Vineyard fishermen have decided to view this development as a chance to try to restore their long-lost local cod fishery.
As the Vineyard group’s spokesman said, “I think it is about time for us to put something back into the wild fishery. If we don’t, the alternative is worse. There could be mass-scale aquaculture, and then it will be something we have no part in.”
Aquaculture will not be a cure-all for the troubles fisheries in this region face, and commercial fishermen need to keep a watchful eye on the aquaculture permitting process to ensure their interests are fully represented.
But that said, we would encourage fishermen to keep an open mind about aquaculture in the hope that it may someday play a role in enhancing commercial fishing opportunities in this region.
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