Freshwater aquaculture has been in existence since ancient times. As far back as 3500 B.C. the Chinese were cultivating carp in freshwater ponds and rice paddies and the cultivation of clams is found in Chinese literature from 746 A.D. Egyptian hieroglyphics depict tilapia farming.

In light of the proposed halibut aquaculture farm in Linekin Bay, many questions about aquaculture have arisen. Is it really the future of fishing? Is it really the only way the world will be able to keep up with the demand for fish and shellfish due to the oceans being polluted and over-fished? Although we encourage everyone to do their own research, what follows is a rough, incomplete timeline of aquaculture taken from www.aces.edu.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines aquaculture as “the propagation and rearing of aquatic organisms in controlled or selected aquatic environments for any commercial, recreational, or public purpose. Potential purposes of aquaculture include bait production, wild stock enhancement, fish culture for zoos and aquaria, rebuilding of populations of threatened and endangered species, and food production for human consumption.”

Saltwater aquaculture dates back to the year 1400 in Indonesia after milkfish were accidentally trapped in coastal ponds at high tide. In 1733 Germany, a farmer successfully pressed eggs and sperm from trout during spawning season and fertilized them. Oyster farming began in France and Japan in 2000 B.C. and along the US. Atlantic coast in the early 1800s.  Sometime during the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Farm Pond Program to encourage the growth of aquaculture as an industry, and to both build and stockpile fish ponds on farms. The program was backed by federal subsidies.

In the 1990s, the feasibility of off-shore farms was explored in the Mediterranean. Tilapia and striped bass are farm-raised in the U.S. and research begins on the feasibility of farming flounder, halibut and sablefish. In 1994, Maine started commercial seaweed aquaculture.

By 2001, however, problems with escaped salmon hit Maine hard when infectious salmon anemia made its way here; 1 million-plus fish had to be slaughtered. Two years later, Maine salmon farmers were found in violation of the Clean Water Act. They were ordered to fallow their sites for two to three years and discontinue their use of European fish strains.

In 1970 worldwide fish consumption reached 40 million tons; by 1998 that amount had grown to 86 million tons. In 1976 world aquaculture is estimated to have yielded 6.1 million metric tons of fish and shellfish. By the end of the 1980s aquaculture production worldwide reached 10 million metric tons. According to the Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org), total fish production, farmed and wild, reached 154 million tons in 2011. Of that amount, 130 million tons were consumed by people and the rest used for fish oil and meal, bait and pharmaceutical products. By 2020 fish production by aquaculture is expected to represent 60 percent of the total catch.

The expected increase in total aquaculture production makes it imperative to find new ways to farm and protect the environment. Proponents say aquaculture is the way to produce the world's demand for fish. Opponents say existing aquaculture sites are harming the ecosystems in which they are located. They say they are concerned about the long-term affect on the sites.

In 2004, according to www.seaweb.org, aquaculture reform should encompass the conservation of water, land, plants and the genetic integrity of each species, not be destructive to the environment,  and be technologically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable.

There are six key components commonly cited for ecological and sustainable aquaculture today listed on Seaweb: 1.preservation of the form and function of the natural resources in which a farm is located; 2. using animal wastes and plants instead of fishmeal for food; 3. take necessary measures to make sure chemicals and nutrients used are not discharged as pollutants; 4.use of native species;  5. integrating the farm into the local economy and community; and 6. the sharing of practices and information on a global scale.

Aquaculture's proponents say it is the only way to keep up with the world's increasing demand for fish. They point out we are dealing with the results of overfishing, the effects of pollutants in ocean waters, habitat destruction, and global warming.

The UNH aquaculture project

Most of the aquaculture farms in the U.S. are land-based or in-shore. Richard Langan was director of the Open Ocean Aquaculture demonstration project, begun in 1997 at the University of New Hampshire.

The goal of the project was to measure the environmental impact of aquaculture in open ocean and explore the economic viability of farming fin and shellfish with the vision of developing a sustainable, off-shore aquaculture industry. For four years prior to the installation, they collected biological and environmental data about the New Hampshire waters and ocean floor, as well as data related to the impact of the ocean on the aquaculture equipment.

The UNH farm was on a 30-acre site, six miles off the coast of New Hampshire, one mile south of the Isles of Shoals.

Native brood stock was used to raise Atlantic halibut, cod and haddock in three submersible pens in 180 feet of water with approximately 100 feet of water below them. Native shellfish species were raised on submersible longlines near the cages. Langan said they modified the cages for flounder and halibut to give them a place rest. This was the first time Atlantic halibut had been raised in open-ocean cages.

For one year an aquapod (not used to house fish) was in the waters for testing and engineering assessments. It is the same aquapod proposed by Maddocks for the halibut farm in Linekin Bay. The Open Ocean Aquaculture project designed the mooring systems used at the demonstration farm in Linekin Bay.

The Open Ocean Aquaculture project designed a programmable feeding system from scratch that utilized WiFi to access the feeder, monitoring how much feed was in the storage tanks. Cameras were installed in the feeder tubes so researchers could observe the feed going in and observe the fish eating. By viewing the fish they could see when the fish were becoming sated and then stopped the feed from entering the feeding tube.

“A long time ago, aquaculture farmers would guess at the amount of food needed,” Langan said. “But they had no idea how much feed was eaten and how much was falling.”

The amount of wild feeder fish used to produce farmed fish is of concern as wild fish are a finite resource. Langan said in 1980 2.5 pounds of fish was needed to produce 1 pound of salmon; in 2012 you need 1.1 pounds for 1 pound of salmon. The Verlasso salmon farm in Patagonia uses 1 pound of feeder fish for 1 pound of salmon.

Langan said containment practices and equipment are not like they were in the 1980s, '90s, or even in the early 2000s, and that today aquaculture makes less of a negative imprint than ever before.  He said more research is done today when deciding where to locate an aquaculture farm, unlike in the past when farms were located close to where the farmers were because it was convenient.

“Today we look for adequate depth and current,” Langan said. “More current scatters waste over a large area and the ocean floor can assimilate it.”

Langan said a rigorous maintenance schedule was observed over the 10 years the Open Ocean Aquaculture project project was active. Divers carried repair kits with them in case they observed any wear and tear, or an area that could potentially be weak; anything that might lend itself to a fish escape route. “The issue with escapees has not been solved, but we are working now on copper netting that is hard to get through, it resists bio-fouling (algae and other sea growth on the pens), and increases flow for healthier fish,” Langan said.

The researcher and former fisherman noted, however, that that regardless of what man does, there is always an impact on the natural world.

“There is no such thing as raising food, either aquaculture or agriculture – even in organic farming – and not changing the biodiversity of the area being farmed,” Langan said. “It comes down to no farms, no food.”

In addition to grants and Congressional earmarks, the project was funded from the sale of fish and mussels to wholesalers in Portland and smaller harvests were sold to local distributors and local restaurants. Mussels were sold to Great Eastern Mussel and American Mussel in Rhode Island.

The Open Ocean Aquaculture demo project's final harvest of cod was in the fall of 2012. All of the project's infrastructure was removed from the ocean.

Langan and the UNH team view the research project as a success.

“We demonstrated it is possible [to moor] submersible cages in open ocean that can withstand anything the north Atlantic can dish out – there were no failures in 10 years and many bad nor'easters,” Langan said in response to emailed questions. “We can develop remote, automated feeding, observing, and monitoring of environmental effects; we can successfully rear several species of native Gulf of Maine fish from egg to harvest; open ocean mussel culture can be a successful enterprise, and when done in close proximity to fish cages can assimilate some of the metabolic products of fish farming; with proper siting and good management, environmental impacts are negligible or essentially non-existent.”

Langan is now the director of the Atlantic Marine Aquaculture Center at UNH. The Center continues research geared toward developing environmentally conscious and sustainable aquaculture farms. The center partners with eight other groups with background and experience in technology, cage/pen design and manufacturing, broodstock, etc. For more information on the Open Ocean Aquaculture project and the Center, visit http://ooa.unh.edu.

Proposed Linekin Bay halibut project

Since the proposal of a halibut farm in Linekin Bay, the UNH project is referred to often, but the only things they have in common are that they are both examples of halibut aquaculture and they use the same feeding system – if Maddocks purchases it from UNH. The UNH aquaculture farm was a research and development project while the proposed halibut farm in Linekin Bay will be a commercial enterprise.

Data on the Linekin Bay site and proposed usage must be conducted by Maddocks before an application can be filed with the Department of Marine Resources. Once that happens, the department will conduct its own testing and look at currents and flushing of organic matter on the bay floor.

Maddocks plans to start with one or two pods, but at full development the lease site can hold up to 10 pods.