In Franklin, the University of Maine’s Center for Cooperative Aquaculture will soon have a new neighbor, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is poised to complete a National Coldwater Marine Aquaculture Center right next door. Together, the two will comprise one of the largest and most important coldwater aquaculture research centers in the United States. The two facilities will be so intertwined that they’ll share both research and plumbing.
Exterior construction on the 50,000-square-foot USDA facility is essentially complete. The pricetag for the project has been estimated at between $12 million and $20 million. Dr. Bill Walters, the USDA center research leader, said he can’t wait to move in.
“I’ve been excited for three or four years,” he said.
For the past three years, he and other researchers have already grown the center’s first generation of fish in temporary facilities. USDA researchers have timed the project so that when they’re ready to move into the center, the fish grown will be ready for bigger tanks.
Atlantic salmon will be the center’s species of focus when it opens in May. Researchers plan to grow different families of salmon and look for genetic characteristics favorable to New England fish farmers, like quick growth rates, resistance to disease, and ability to survive in artificial surroundings. Once grown, the fish will then be sent to area fish farmers for market testing. Similar research is being done at the University of Maine center with halibut and cod.
“We’re going toward domesticity, I guess,” said University of Maine researcher Dr. Nick Brown.
Salmon has long been a popular species for aquaculture in the Northeast and Maine in particular, said Walters. Stocks of wild salmon are heavily depleted, yet demand for salmon has only intensified with their disappearance in the wild. Aquaculture has stepped in to fill the salmon gap in the fish market.
“We’re at the point where [the farmed salmon market] is set globally to explode,” Walters said.
But until recently, the majority of parent stock for U.S. salmon aquaculture farms has come from Europe or South America, said Walters. These foreign fish were less suited for New England’s climate and regulators worried aquaculture escapees might disrupt local salmon species.
The federal government put an end to the importation of foreign salmon stock in Maine when it placed salmon in Downeast rivers on the Endangered Species list. Without a foreign stock supply and with no legal way to harvest stock from the wild, salmon farmers will rely heavily on research facilities like the one in Franklin.
Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association, welcomes the new USDA aquaculture center. He said the U.S. has fallen behind in the global market for farmed fish. Norway, Iceland Scotland and Ireland have been working in aquaculture research for the last 30 years, and they often don’t share research findings with other countries. Belle said the U.S. currently faces an $8.2 billion gap in seafood exports versus imports, making seafood the second leading factor for the national trade deficit.
“Our hope is the programs at the USDA and University of Maine facilities will help level the playing field,” he said.
Walters said the USDA center’s location can provide advantages over other global aquaculture research facilities. It has access to saltwater and can use freshwater and brackish water wells, so researchers can provide many different marine environments. Also, the shared infrastructure with the University of Maine aquaculture center will help streamline operation costs.
While some aquaculture projects meet stiff local resistance, Franklin residents seem to accept both facilities. Belle thinks that’s in part because people tend to criticize business more than academic research, but also because of the two centers’ environmentally-friendly technology. Currently, the two centers discharge over one million gallons of water into Taunton Bay daily, but researchers employ a variety of recycling and cleaning methods designed to make sure water discharged to the bay is clean.
“Unless we’re environmentally sustainable, we’re not going to get a license in Maine,” said Belle.
Steve Perrin monitors bay health for the non-profit Friends of Taunton Bay. He said he was still concerned with the long-term effects of discharging so much water above or below bay water temperature into the bay, but generally impressed with the environmental commitment of the two centers.
“It requires a lot of…plumbing, but it doesn’t raise a lot of ire,” Perrin said.
Irene Oberman is president of the Franklin historical society and lives next door to the two aquaculture centers. She said the two facilities already provide the town with good year-round jobs. She has also noticed that since the University of Maine facility went online, she’s seen an increase of wildlife on the bay, most likely feeding off fish scraps in the discharge.
“It’s brought back some of those raptors and birds of prey,” she said.