A Virtual Tour of Maine's Aquaculture Industry

[Music] one of the exciting things about aquaculture in the state is how fast it's growing we are the fastest growing food production method in the world and in the state of maine aquaculture is growing roughly 2.4 per year on an annual basis one of the most interesting things about aquaculture in the state of maine is how diverse it is we grow over 20 different species of plants and animals and use roughly 10 to 12 different production methods on any given year we have a big group of new young farmers coming into the sector the average age of a farmer in aquaculture in the state of maine is 36 years old so we are the new young face of the working waterfront in maine i've really never had i guess a real job i've always been sort of independent i grew up on isboro's and started lobstering when i was 11. graduated from milesboro central school and then went to the university of maine i got a resource agribusiness management degree came back and went fishing kept lobstering then my wife got interested in aquaculture the next thing you know we started a mussel farm we have nine rafts total two sites right now there's roughly six rafts full of product and three rafts full of seed all of our seed is caught wildly by placing ropes in the water column where we feel the wild seed sets going to come through and then they naturally set on the mussel rope and then we grow them out from there aquaculture has been a new industry for islesboro we're very much still on the ramp up side of things our first year we sold we harvested 700 pounds and our second year we harvested 7 000 pounds and you know we're just this year getting to a point where we're harvesting seven thousand pounds a month and we hope to grow to grow that we have five employees three full time and then two part-time these farms are producing enough product that you have to get out of the state so it makes it a year-round job instead of just something that's maybe seasonal i wanted to work on the water i wanted to continue in a tradition that's been in my family for a long time and i view aquaculture as an extension of that a way to preserve that tradition of working on the water i grow american oysters in the scarborough river primarily and grow it out in mostly floating containers floating bags until year two in which case it comes out to cape elizabeth and goes uh goes on to the bottom i also grow sea scallops off cape elizabeth people want to live on the water it's not necessarily just the amazing natural beauty but it's also to be a witness of sort of that traditional experience and to see people out working or sailing or farming oysters [Music] so we've been operating in maine for about 20 years now cook is a family-owned business that started out over 35 years ago raising atlantic salmon in the ocean it was a fairly new concept at the time started with 5000 fish and the company has grown expanded to have operations around the world people are looking for healthy local fresh seafood produced here in the state of maine so our challenge is to meet that demand and what we've seen is that we're able to diversify the working waterfront in maine oh i'm very proud of what i do it's enabled me to stay in the community because a lot of us when we started when we come to work in aquaculture we had left the fishing industry like i had to go to a mill and you know and i you know i was happy there but when i had a chance to come back and work around the water we have 288 employees right now that work directly for coca agriculture and plus there's a lot of spin off from contractors and vendors and the the agriculture industry has allowed me to live the american dream it really has my family are close i have a good job i have a nice home and i enjoy going to work every day the water is changing the world is changing and in order to continue to be who we are we have to find new ways of staying on the water [Music] ocean approved was started as the first commercial kelp farm we renamed it atlantic sea farms and basically the model is we work with these 24 for fishermen along the coast or aquaculturists and these folks are getting their own leases and we're training them on how to harvest how to farm keith is this person he's been kelp farming now for three years which makes him one of the few fishermen out there that have been farming for that long in maine so he's a real pioneer i've always diversified as long as i've been fishing and lobstering isn't the only thing because it has a tendency to go up and down and so we try to get into another project not just solely have one project going it fits into my lobstering season better than anything else you don't have to work at the kelp season during the summer time in early fall and that's when lobstering is primed one thing that people can be a little bit resistant to is the idea that we're fishing the sea now we're farming the sea but the reality is we used to fish here in maine for several different species and we have an economy that is almost completely dependent on lobster that is increasingly vulnerable to climate change in order to be who we are and stay on the water and make money on the water and be the mariners that we've always been we need to continue to look to diversify and that's what aquaculture is going to give us the option to do so maine aquaculture has been around for over 45 years and we're really charting a new way into maine's future the main brand is worth something people know that maine seafood is some of the best seafood in the world and so we get paid a little more than our competitors from other parts of the world and other parts of the the country by producing local healthy seafood and delivering it direct to consumers and building the main brand we're helping build maine's future [Music]

Channel: Maine Aquaculture Association

Views: 15,670

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Id: lmzMTQZltFo

Length: 7min 24sec (444 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020