October 2, 2018 — This week we’re taking a deep dive into aquaculture and its potential to add real value to the state’s coastal economies. In “Aquaculture’s Next Wave” we will meet the innovators who are trying to take seafood farming to a new level in Maine.
Worldwide, aquaculture now provides more than half the world’s seafood. Yet here in the U.S. and in Maine, it’s far behind wild caught harvest. At the same time, we in the U.S. import roughly 90 percent of our seafood. For some investors and entrepreneurs, including Maine lobstermen, that spells opportunity.
Maine Public reporter Fred Bever spoke with Morning Edition host Irwin Gratz about aggressive exploration of new technologies and new markets for farmed seafood.
Gratz: Why is aquaculture important right now?
Bever: It’s because marine ecosystems and economies are being disrupted. Actively farming fish, shellfish, even seaweed — that can be a hedge against disruption and, long term, maybe the most profitable response. There’s a growing set of Maine visionaries who are pursuing that.
The planet’s oceans are always in flux and wild harvests have long been vulnerable to natural variation and overfishing, right?
Yes, but with the oceans warming, the dynamics are accelerating, and that’s nowhere more true than in the Gulf of Maine.
Scientists say the Gulf is warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, correct?
That’s almost a truism now. We’ve seen epic disruptions in recent decades — the crash of cod, fisheries for marine shrimp, for urchin and now herring are all restricted, lobster populations are making a slow march ever north and east following the warming trends.