Through an improbable series of events—a hip replacement gone bad, a visit with a college friend not seen in 55 years, an impromptu trip to George J. Mitchell Field—two marine biologists with a combined 93 years’ experience in aquaculture and other marine-related projects have put together a plan for an Oceanic Center in Harpswell.
Since the late 1990s, Chris Heinig of Harpswell, acting chairman of the Harpswell Oceanic Center (HOC) board, has wanted to develop an aquaculture project for the Mitchell Field property, a former Navy fuel depot deeded to the town in 1995. The town has designated nine acres as a Marine Business District. Heinig has broad experience in aquafarming that includes starting a shellfish farm and hatchery in Harpswell in the 70s, and later, working on aquaculture projects in France, Morocco and Tunisia. Presently, he runs MER Assessment Corp., which provides marine environmental consulting services.
Through a mutual friend from Harpswell, Tap Pryor met Heinig on an impromptu trip to the field. He says he immediately felt that the site was “crying out for a good project” and had much in common with the location in Hawaii where he founded Sea Life Park in 1963 and an adjacent Oceanic Institute devoted to aquaculture research in 1964. Among the many other ventures of his 80 years, Pryor also developed on-land algae and oyster farms in Hawaii and the Cook Islands, (the latter won a United Nations SEED award for innovation in sustainable development) and is helping establish a catfish aquafarm in Nigeria.
HOC is a non-profit corporation that will administer three separate ventures: aquaculture research and development, an educational visitor center, and a for-profit commercial corporation, RAS Corp., for seafood production and marketing. The latter will help support the other activities. HOC and RAS Corp. have received grants from Maine Technology Institute to conduct preliminary studies for their proposed on-land recirculating aquafarm, to do a site plan and initial environmental permitting, and to apply for an SBIR $100,000 Phase 1 grant to construct a project prototype at Mitchell Field.
Initially, RAS Corp. will use conventional aquaculture techniques, but they will explore and adapt innovative methods to attain what Pryor describes as “the first of the two Holy Grails of aquaculture”: a zero-waste operation. Zero-waste techniques are increasingly important as the demand for seafood increases worldwide and wild resources are depleted, resulting in greater reliance on aquaculture. Scientists estimate that approximately 50 percent of the seafood consumed worldwide is grown on aquafarms, in bays and open ocean sites and on-land facilities. Pryor notes that as ocean leases “become more difficult to obtain due to the diminishing number of good sites and natural and man-made threats plus a myriad of regulatory constraints,” more aquaculturists will turn to on-land technology.
HOC will have three different recirculating systems. Fish, initially black sea bass, will be housed in 600-cubic-meter 50-foot-diameter tanks filled with seawater. Five to 10 percent of the water will be replenished daily. In the first commercial production facility, conventional recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) technology will be used. This type of system pipes water that contains particulate and dissolved wastes created by the fish through a particulate filter where the solid waste is removed and ultimately disposed of. After that, water with dissolved wastes goes through a biofilter similar to the carbon filter in a home fish tank, and then is aerated to remove carbon dioxide and replenish oxygen before being sent back to the fish.
In a second building, this technology will be enhanced (ERAS) with an innovative addition, replacing the particulate filter with a second cash crop, sand worms (Nereis virens), which will feed on and remove the particulate matter. The water then goes through similar filters as in RAS. Using worms to take up fish waste is a proven technology in ocean aquaculture, where worms have been planted beneath fish growout cages, but they have not been used in recirc systems. Nick Brown, PhD, Director of University of Maine’s Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research since 2001, who is also acting as an advisor for the project, has experimented with carrying particulate waste to worms, and discovered they grow well.
A third building in HOC will hold the zero waste-system. In it, both particulate and dissolved wastes are taken up by other organisms. Called Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA), this recirculating system will first send wastewater to worms for removal of particulate waste, then to a third crop, microalgae, which feed on the dissolved nitrogenous wastes and CO2 and add oxygen in the process. The algae can either be harvested, or can be piped to feed to a fourth crop, filter-feeding shellfish such as oysters, before the water passes through limited filtration and returns to the fish.
While each of these components has been used in various ocean and outdoor on-land aquaculture operations, such as seaweed and mussels growing alongside fish cages, Heinig says he does not know of any place where the four have been used together.
What Pryor describes as the other Holy Grail of aquaculture will provide another challenge for research at the center: developing aquaculture fish feed without relying on herring and other small wild fish as a base ingredient. In recent years, many experimental feeds have been concocted that use soybeans, seaweeds, even ground worms, but few have managed to leave out the small fish entirely.
HOC will construct buildings to house the three recirculating systems and a fourth building to hold an education and visitor center that would have a biosecure link to the IMTA building where visitors could see the working system. Heinig and Pryor envision an aquarium and interactive marine science exhibits for local school groups, learning and research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, and perhaps a store. There is room on the site for research institutions to construct their own facilities.
They have been investigating the extent of underground piping left by the Navy to see what can be utilized, and hope to use an existing pump house to obtain water from Middle Bay. Heinig says they will employ multiple forms of alternative energy, including solar, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal and helical windmills to provide electricity and heat.
A dedicated team has been working on the project, including board members Alan Shaver, a Harpswell attorney and financial manager for the Harpswell Neck Fire and Rescue, and Katherine Chatterjee, former Harpswell Selectman and board chairman who has broad experience administering federal, state and local funds for a nonprofit corporation. In addition to Pryor, advisors include his son Ted Pryor, a venture capitalist with over 25 years’ experience in banking and financial transactions, and Jean-Paul Cadoret, PhD, an internationally-recognized expert on algal research and production.
Pryor, Heinig and others who support HOC are enthusiastic about the project for multiple reasons: the economic boost it can give to Harpswell, the educational and research opportunities it can provide locally and further afield, the opportunity to develop sustainable fish feed and to prove that innovative zero-waste aquaculture can be applied in a commercial operation. The latter “may seem like a novel concept,” says Heinig, “but what now seems out-of-the-box thinking may someday be the way we are producing much of our seafood.”
Presently, they are waiting for word regarding their SBIR Phase I grant application to the USDA, preparing proposals for other grant possibilities, and they are developing a lease agreement with the town of Harpswell.
Chris Heinig will be giving presentations about HOC on October 17 at the Harpswell Heritage Land Trust.
For further information, visit http://harpswelloceaniccenter.or
Muriel Hendrix is a freelance writer living in Bath.