Confidence Grows in Start-up Eel Farm

by Laurie Schreiber

Sara Radamaker, founder of a start-up eel farming operation called American Unagi, told the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASFMC) technical committee that the operation is moving along well as it scales up.

Radamaker reported on her operation during a conference call held by the committee July 15.

Her operation is the only eel farm in Maine.

It was the only applicant that replied to a request for proposals issued by the Department of Marine Resources (DMR), DMR scientist Gail Wippelhauser told the committee.

“Maine put out a request for proposals again this year,” Wippelhauser said. “American Unagi was the only company to respond. We accepted that proposal.”

Radamaker’s operation grows market-size eels from elvers harvested by Maine fishermen during the winter harvest season. Those elvers are part of a 200-pound quota allocated to the state for the purpose of aquaculture.

She said her plan for the upcoming elver season is essentially the same as the past season, but she plans to have a larger grow-out facility.

“We had a really successful first year with the quota,” she said.

Radamaker said she worked with 13 licensed fishermen along the coast from Pemaquid to near Lubec. The geographic spread offered insights into the fishing season and allowed her to work with a diverse group of fishermen, she said.

“This is a fishery that’s typically individual licensed fishermen who work independently,” she said. “W e made sure the group working with us worked together and viewed this as a team. It was a great collaboration among fishermen.”

This year’s fishing season started off somewhat slowly due to cold-water temperatures, she said. Most of the fishermen she was working with didn’t start seeing elvers until mid-April.

American Unagi operates a standard buying station, she said. Fishermen used fyke nets and brought their harvest to the station. Their swipe cards, which record poundage, have a separate allocation for the aquaculture harvest. The elvers were weighed, scanned into the system, and held for one to two weeks, until there were enough to move to the grow-out facility, she explained. The elvers were weighed again at the facility and stocked into grow-out tanks. The DMR received routine notifications about the company’s activities and the Marine Patrol inspected the facility, she said.

In anticipation of a construction delay, she took 130 pounds of elvers this year, instead of 200 pounds, she said.

“We could have fished the whole 200, but because I didn’t want to push our current facility too hard, I went with 70 pounds less on the quota, to make sure our eels remained healthy through the season,” she said.

Overall, the season went well, she said.

“The fishermen were very happy to be part of this,” she said. “There were a lot of other fishermen who were excited about this as a future opportunity.”

Radamaker said the operation has been growing steadily since she began experimenting with elver grow-out in 2014.

“We’ve grown steadily, showing this can be a viable business for the U.S. industry and serves the U.S. markets for high-quality local eel,” she said. “One of our big pushes is that, with the issues around the world with the eel fishery, we’re able to provide traceability and accountability.”

The company is requesting the full allocation of 200 pounds for the upcoming season, she said.

Larger production capacity will result in improved cost efficiencies, she said.

“With approval of the aquaculture quota, there’s a lot more confidence in being able to do a larger facility successfully,” she said.

American Unagi is currently marketing eels to the U.S. market, she said.

“It’s a product that people are very happy to be seeing growing locally,” she said.

The committee also heard a presentation from American Eel Farm, a similar operation in North Carolina.

Committee members said that, going forward, they’d like eel farm operations to tabulate more in-depth information about where and how the elvers are harvested, including data like watershed drainage and harvest locations. The information was deemed useful for comparison purposes as the fledgling industry moves forward.

The committee agreed to recommend additional data requests to the full commission.

At the Maine Fishermen’s Forum in March, Radamaker said she built a pilot facility in 2015, growing a metric ton of eels. Today, plans call for building a grow-out facility in Waldoboro, with capacity to produce 200 metric tons by 2020.

It takes one to two years to grow elvers to market size, she said. So far, she said, she’s been sending product to chefs across the U.S. to try the product.

The aquaculture quota of 200 pounds is on top of the 9,688 pounds that Maine elver harvesters were allowed to catch this year. Typically, harvested Maine elvers are exported for grow-out overseas, and market-size eels are imported to the U.S. to cater to a growing market for dishes like sushi.