May 24, 2019 — A new report by an American think tank on the state of the U.S. aquaculture industry highlights the challenges and opportunities facing domestic seafood farming in state and federal waters.
The Washington, D.C., U.S.A.-based Center for American Progress found that aquaculture offers major economic benefits, but it must be balanced with regulations to ensure the proper location, farm management practices, and species selection.
The authors, Alexandra Carter and Miriam Goldstein, addressed the debate over the regular framework necessary to expand mariculture in federal waters, offering analysis on where the industry is today and how agencies and industry stakeholders can move forward.
Carter and Goldstein primarily saw a lack of information on the industry and they wanted to create an educational non-biased product, Carter told SeafoodSource.
“We wanted to provide a briefing of the sector,” Carter said. “We wanted to frame the project around the question on whether we should expand aquaculture into federal waters or not.”
Right now, Carter is encouraged to see the positive response from the industry and policymakers and hopes the report will provide a “baseboard” for other NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and think tanks to follow up and do their own ocean aquaculture analysis projects.
“While there has been congressional interest in regulating offshore aquaculture for a least a decade, it can best be characterized as intermittent,” the authors wrote in the report.