Global Aquaculture

Aquaculture practices around the world offer valuable lessons for Maine’s industry, said Paul Dobbins of the World Wildlife Fund.

Dobbins presented a talk called “A Global Review of Aquaculture Innovation: Connecting to Maine,” at Jan. 17’s Maine Aquaculture Research, Development and Education Summit.

Dobbins discussed practices that ranged from longline oyster and seaweed farming in South Korea to mussel farms in New Zealand.

Co-farming of seaweed with other species is a growing practice, he noted. In New Zealand, national leaders have called aquaculture a “strategic imperative” that’s essential to society’s moral and encomic health, he said. For many around the world, he said, aquaculture is practiced by fishermen as a second income. Older fishermen deem it essential to develop the industry for younger generations, he said.

The technology has evolved accordingly. For example, on Vancouver Island, off Canada’s Pacific coast, the shellfish farming industry has developed a handheld inventory system for their mussel rafts, where everything is bar-coded, which allows them to coordinate availability of product with buyers. On Kodiak Island, off Alaska, a seaweed farm has developed a large, portable water transport bag that can hold 500,000 pounds of harvested seaweed; another invention is a small, autonomous tug that tows the bag from the farm back to land.

Said Dobbins, “I think there’s a great opportunity for use here in Maine to use our homegrown talent and ingenuity.”