Raising salmon in Down East Maine is risky business. The industry has fought hard to survive threats from disease, competition from abroad and nets damaged by storms and seals. Today, the finfish aquaculture industry employs about 2,500 people in two of the state’s most impoverished counties and generates $140 million in personal income. Maine has become the largest U.S. producer of Atlantic salmon and the fourth largest producer of aquaculture products in the country.

However, an industry that is dependent on one species is vulnerable. In the near future, the recent endangered species listing is likely to make it more expensive to raise a pound of salmon. The solution is to diversify, and haddock is one of the logical choices to investigate.

This species, once abundant in the Gulf of Maine, offers several advantages. The same geographic factors that favor salmon (cold, rich marine waters and a long coastline) make haddock production technically feasible. Much of the infrastructure that supports salmon could be applied to haddock. Most importantly, a reduction in landings of the wild fish over the past several decades has increased prices to the point that an aquaculture operation may be profitable.

Several years ago, one of us, Linda Kling, started the ball rolling when she developed techniques that dramatically increased the success rate in raising newly hatched cod to the juvenile stage. In cooperation with Canadian researchers, she extended that work to haddock. She continues to improve on her success in campus laboratories in Orono and will be trying it on a larger, near commercial scale, at the new UMaine Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research in Franklin.

Good biology is a necessary ingredient in a competitive aquaculture industry, but economic success is critical. As a result, we have started a new project to assess the bio-economic feasibility of a haddock aquaculture business. This project will look at the economics of three phases of haddock farming: raising live food for the newly hatched larval fish, raising newly hatched fish to a juvenile stage, and developing techniques to grow out the juveniles in marketable size. Finally, we will also study market demand in order to determine the tradeoffs between consumer requirements and production costs. Our work is supported by a grant from the National Research Initiative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The greatest hurdle lies in the early life stages of the haddock. Like many newborns, baby fish are exceedingly picky and tender. They are particularly fond of tiny marine animals or plankton. We’ve tried other inert foods without much luck. The challenge for industry is to raise plankton cheaply and reliably while researchers develop better inert diets. While current methods are cumbersome, time consuming and unreliable, new methods have been developed that deserve closer scrutiny.

Raising haddock to the juvenile stage also presents difficulties. Brine shrimp are the food of choice, but they are expensive. Indeed, other researchers have determined that brine shrimp account for more than 75 percent of the cost of raising another species, sea bass. Good nutrition that can be delivered in a cost-effective manner is an absolute necessity for any business that raises animals for profit.

In the third stage, questions remain on the technology and the costs associated with raising fish to market size. What diets are best? What environmental conditions optimize growth? How many fish can be raised in a net pen of a given size? Kling and her colleagues continue to search for the biological answers and Dalton for the ones that can produce haddock in the most cost-effective manner for consumers.

This research is vital. If production cost is too high, demand is stifled and the industry withers before it begins. On the other hand, if low-cost technology can be developed, a haddock industry could develop alongside salmon. Assessing the economic feasibility is only the first stage however. If the process looks promising, the environmental effects must be investigated and incorporated into the cost assessment.

Before investors begin lining up at the dock, questions about the potential haddock market and the role of public and private sectors also need to be answered. What other fish species compete with haddock for the consumer’s dollar? What happens if wild stocks rebound and prices drop? Should government subsidize private investment by providing loan guarantees? Policies in such areas have been part of the agricultural sector for many years, to the benefit of major farming states.

Development of an efficient haddock production system will determine whether or not the Northeast has a competitive advantage in this business. Ultimately, having more than one finfish species to cultivate will reinforce the state’s traditional tie to the ocean and shore up the economic foundation in areas of Maine that have been struggling for years.

Timothy Dalton is an assistant professor in the Department of Resource Economics and Policy, and Linda Kling is an associate professor in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine.