Martha's Vineyard Finfish Hatchery, First in Region

I love my home island of Martha's Vineyard. It's a close community. The Red Stocking Fund cartons at the local grocery stores are always heaping this time of year. There's a great music scene happening, which I love as a singer-songwriter and band member. But as a journalist, covering international seafood farming it's also become a great place to see good aquaculture being done for the right reasons.

Recently I got to see something special, touring a former tribal shellfish hatchery that's been refurbished into a finfish operation, the first of its kind in the region, and being rebuilt by community grassroots effort.

I have covered the Winter Flounder Restoration Plan for Martha's Vineyard now for a little more than a year for Hatchery International as part of my job. I want to share the latest goings on wit the project as the folks behind the project get closer to their first adult winter flounder spawn next year.

After a year of field studies collecting data from two ponds on the island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod, University of New Hampshire (UNH) aquaculture specialists and biologists are moving into the next phase of their winter flounder restoration effort--refurbishing a tribal hatchery.

The Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal council agreed to lease the hatchery to the Dukes County/Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Association (DCFA) for $100, allowing the association and UNH to use the shellfish hatchery for the winter flounder project, the tribe announced in October.

Before fertilized fish eggs can be brought into the facility, it has to be refurbished as a finfish operation. Currently the work is being done to rewire the electrical system, bring in appropriate pumps and tanks for the winter flounder.

The building hasn’t run as a hatchery since before 2006. Two saltwater pumps at the facility were destroyed when the building was hit by lightning in that year. It has already been used for the raising of quahogs, bay scallops and oysters. There is already plenty of information about the health of Menemsha Pond from work done in federally funded bay scallop restoration work by the tribe.

The partnership is part of a federally funded two-year $308,000 National Sea Grant project to find ways to restore one of the most troubled fish resources in Southern New England. The grant provides for enough funds to retrofit the facility to raise fish instead of shellfish. As much as $20,000 from the grant will be used to replace the pumps and get the place working again.

For a year now, members of the fisherman’s association, the tribe, and shellfish constables have been out surveying the waters of Menemsha Pond in Aquinnah and Lagoon Pond in Oak Bluffs and Tisbury, Massachusetts collecting data and samples, as part of the project. The first phase involved water sampling of the two ponds.

The effort now shifts to the second and perhaps most important part of the effort, raising 50,000 juvenile winter flounder in the hatchery to be released later next year into the two ponds. 

Elizabeth Fairchild, the lead marine biologist, and a professor at the UNH, said she is pleased by the 13-month partnership and appreciative of the efforts of many Vineyarders to make it a success. Having a place to raise the juvenile winter flounder, near one of the ponds being studied, is key to the success of the project, she explained.

She’s also happy with the progress of the project.

“Definitely! Warren Doty, of the fishermen’s association, has done a great job guiding the data collection process and Bret Stearns, from the tribe, brought the council and tribal community on board for the restoration program,” she told Hatchery International.

The plan

The project--the largest salt-water fish restoration and aquaculture effort in the region--will use the Tribal hatchery, located on Menemsha Pond to grow up to 50,000 juvenile winter flounder for release into the ponds, according to a recent tribe press release.

The Tribe’s Natural Resources Department has been on board for nearly one year in field studies to determine optimal release strategies for hatchery-reared winter flounder, and will continue to assist with culture, growth, and the release of the flounder.

“The retrofitting of the hatchery is going fantastic,” said Stearns in a telephone interview. “The tribal council is very excited about this. The project is a joint effort between the fishermen’s association and tribe to work together on a very unique project.”

The tour

I recently took a tour of the Aquinnah Hatchery with my uncle Jeff. He's always been interested in what I do, whether it was writing about the Internet and Technology world or now covering the international aquaculture space.

Doty showed us what he calls the "Honeymoon Tanks" where the hope is that adult flounder will spawn, making the eggs that will hatch and become the fry and then juveniles they will return to the fishery.

For now, the focus is on January and February when local fishermen will go out and catch very local winter flounder and bring them to the hatchery.

"We want to catch them as close to the jetties as possible," Doty said.

Then in March, UNH biologists and DCFA members hope to spawn and have eggs in hatchery by the end of the month.

I'll try and post some images of the hatchery here in coming days.

Investing in Aquaculture

       Every industry, from the Internet/Tech boom in the 1990's to Aquaculture now, needs Venture Capital (VC) funding to push young start-ups to become commercial and to follow along, navigating the company through the first stages of its business.
      Aquacopia is the only VC firm focused entirely on Aquaculture. I had the pleasure of writing about them in the upcoming issue of Aquaculture North America, interviewing the CEO and co-founder of the  firm, David Tze.
      Located on 28 West and 27th Streets in Manhattan, Aquacopia co-founder and managing director Tze wants to find the next best aquaculture shop, technology or alternative feed source to invest in, whether a startup or an already commercial outfit looking to change or expand.

    “The thing that caught my attention was an article in Wired Magazine a while back on open ocean mariculture and also the supply and demand dynamics of seafood moving forward; the growth rate of the world population,” Tze told me. “It all got me very fascinated and inspired.”

      The industry had also gained the attention of Jared Polis, Tze's undergraduate pal from Princeton. Polis started and sold an online greeting card company to Excite AtHome in 1999; he scored again by unloading ProFlowers, an online flower shop, to Liberty Media in 2006, according to a Forbes Magazine story on the two in 2009. 

      Tze had also worked at an online marketplace for the oil and gas industry and as well as other ventures in e-commerce. While researching the opportunities out there for aquaculture, including possibly starting their own fish farm, they both concluded that much of the research is being done at the University level in the U.S. but most of it rarely gets commercialized.

     Both concluded then that there was a need for professional investing in early stage aquaculture.

Not deterred by some of the controversial challenges facing aquaculture, like feed fishery pressures, tightly farmed marine fish inviting disease outbreaks and waste concentrations, the two went on an investment hunt for their venture capital idea.

     Polis reportedly mustered $16 million, including his own savings and money from friends and family, before stepping aside in 2008 after winning a congressional seat in Colorado. Now Tze is Aquacopia's only full-time employee, navigating the fund, which has minority stakes in five holdings, and charges investors 2.5% on assets under management, plus a 20% cut of the capital gains, according to the Forbes piece.

    The startups Aquacopia tends to invest in are those companies most likely to meet those controversies in aquaculture that have plagued the industry since the 1980s.

    Their holdings


     Tze is excited about the opportunities at Oberon FMR, Inc., an alternative feed manufacturer in Idaho Springs, Colo.

     Oberon is an early stage, startup, company with proprietary technology capable of producing a sustainably produced protein meal. Oberon’s product serves as a fish meal replacement (FMR) or additive ingredient for animal feeds, primarily those destined for the aquaculture industry. Oberon has developed a sustainable process for generating high quality single cell protein (SCP) meal from by-products contained in the wastewater treatment streams generated by food and beverage manufacturers.  

   “We have developed ProFloc, a high quality protein source (approximately 65% protein) that can serve as a fish meal replacement,” Oberon’s president and CEO Andrew Baum said in an email. “The product is produced using the wastewater from food processing facilities and breweries.”

Baum said Aquacopia participated in the startup’s series A and B rounds and in bridge financing too.

Aquacopia also helped out in other ways as well.

    “David Tze has provided excellent strategic advice as a BOD [Board of Directors] member, and his extensive contacts in the financial and aquaculture industries have been invaluable,” Baum explained.

    Baum said Oberon hopes to go commercial in 2012.

    The VC firm also invests in commercial mariculture ocean pen maker Ocean Farm Technologies. Tze serves an advisor to the board for industry navigation and other services. In addition, the VC firm invests in Open Blue Sea Farms, an open ocean Cobia farm in Panama; Futuna Blue, a captive breeding center for Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna in Spain; and Litchfield Farms Organic and Natural’s Community Catch, an online marketplace that matches seafood buyers and fishermen, fish and shellfish farmers and suppliers.

    

    I hope my editors don't get too upset with the amount of my story I took from for this blog post before publication on Nov. 1st. But I thought it's important to share with you the only U.S.aquaculture VC firm out there. That will likely change as the country moves forward with the implementation of the new aquaculture policy released by the Obama Administration last summer. Until then, contact Aquacopia if you have a need for capital funding.

 

 

Autumnal Musings

The leaves around here are prematurely turning brown as a result of all the salt water that was blown off the ocean onto the island from Tropical Storm Irene last week. The temps have yet to get back above 80 degrees F. where they were just days before the storm. Such fall-like elements makes one believe the seasons have changed. It also doesn't help that I'm writing stories for the October issue of Hatchery International.

I live on the Island of Martha's Vineyard, known the world-wide for it's presidential and Hollywood celeb summer visitors, rather than it's young and growing aquaculture sector. But aquaculturists abound on the island, just a 45-minute ride from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

I'm a journalist with over 15-years experience in print, online, and radio broadcast news. I decided just a few years into my career that I wanted to end up writing about, what was back then, just a young, and slightly obscure, seafood production industry--aquaculture. After a long delay, due in part to a deadly car accident I survived in 2002 and the subsequent recovery, I have finally found my place in the small aquaculture journalism community.

Thanks to luck, timing, and a publisher willing to take a risk or two, I am now the single US-based writer for two specialty publications covering the international aquaculture industry--Aquaculture North America and Hatchery International. Both publications are published by Capamara Communications. OK, now that I've re-introduced myself, lets get down to business.

For the next issue of Hatchery International, I am working on nearly 10 pieces that cover hatchery news from California to New England, South Africa to Croatia and beyond. One story is about national fish hatcheries in Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia that sustained damage during the weather events surrounding Hurricane Irene. We will look at the impact of the storm on these hatcheries and what it means to the annual output of the regional hatchery system.

Another story looks at one of South Africa's largest abalone hatchery and farms--AbaGold. The company recently got an injection of $53 million in capital funding to expand its hatchery and farm operations. Abagold's existing hatchery provides a solid foundation for the cultivation of its abalone and consists of four distinct nodes. A recently completed five-year genetic project will soon see the first animals from selected families being placed on the farm.

And another piece looks at the successful spawning of Northern Bluefin Tuna eggs gathered from adults reared in holding pens in the Mediterranean Sea by the American firm Umami Sustainable Seafood, which has tuna ranching facilities and hatchery operations in North America and Croatia. Larvae hatched from eggs, collected from Kali Tuna's holding pens on July 19-21 were analyzed by Genomics Laboratory Macrogen Inc. They were confirmed to be Bluefin Tuna. Further tests conducted on the larvae's mitochondrial DNA determined that they matched their gene base, establishing that natural spawning activity had taken place within Kali's brood stock holding pens. This is the third consecutive year that natural spawning activities have taken place in Umami's Croatian commercial tuna farming facility, Kali Tuna.

Those are just some of the stories I'll be writing about this issue of HI, which will be out to subscribers October 1st.

 E.L.

Summer is here!!!

In short, the long slog of winter is over here on the island of Martha's Vineyard and summer is in full swing. Along with that comes the on rush of main-land tourists, celebs, and politicos--like another planned first family visit in August.

All of whom, will be treated to this season's latest aquaculture ventures on the island. Most notably, the island's first dance in the fin-fish aquaculture sector with the University of New Hampshire Winter Flounder enhancement project, being conducted in the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal Hatchery and several saltwater ponds and lagoon on the island.

Also, the Menemsha blue mussel aquaculture project conducted by Tim Broderick and Al Gale continues later in the summer/fall with another drop of seeded lines into ocean water surrounding the island.

More and more the island is becoming a source of aquaculture produce, from oyster, to blue mussell, to, soon, Winter Flounder fry.