LANDING FISH

The Bush administration recently proposed allowing fish farms up to 200 miles out to sea. A research project slated for central Maine looks the other way – to raising fish on land. Rather than going far from shore to lessen concerns about pollution, escapes and coastal community opposition, this project eliminates many problems by growing fish in closely controlled tanks. The effort, led by the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute’s Center for Marine Biotechnology, needs and deserves state funding.

Backers of the project want $2 million included in the governor’s bond package for research and development to take place at the Thomas M. Teague Biotechnology Center of Maine. In its early phase, 20 jobs would be created.

Although some lawmakers support the project, there is concern that the money is not going to the University of Maine. Although UMaine has an aquaculture center and researchers involved in land-based fish farms, they are not as far along as Yonathan Zohar, the Maryland researcher who is among the leaders in developing closed, recirculating systems for raising fish. Such systems use tap water, which is run through a series of filters to remove waste before being returned to the large tanks.

The state should put money into projects with the greatest potential to spin off new industries here. To lessen concerns, state money could come with the provision that UMaine be included in the technology advances developed at the Teague center.

Dr. Zohar envisions fish farms in empty downtown buildings. They could also grow in Washington County, an area sorely in need of economic development. The county is the center of Maine’s aquaculture industry, which has fallen on hard times after disease outbreaks and winter storms led to the deaths of millions of farmed Atlantic salmon. A recent court order requiring that many pens be left empty was a further setback.

Moving fish farms onshore would avoid these problems. Jim McVey, director of aquaculture programs for the Commerce Department’s National Sea Grant College Program in Silver Spring, Md., believes that land-based aquaculture using recirculating new technology can play a major role in satisfying the nation’s growing appetite for freshwater fish and seafood. Each year, the United States imports fish and shellfish valued at some $14 billion, more than half of it farmed.

Because water temperature, oxygen content, salinity and even the amount of light fish are exposed to can be controlled, fish reach market size much quicker in such systems. Professor Zohar’s team raised gilthead seabream, a valuable European fish, to marketable size in less than nine months, much quicker than the 14 months it takes to reach the same size in net pens in the ocean.

The system, however, is expensive. That’s why Dr. Zohar has focused on commercially valuable species such as the seabream, which can fetch $14 a pound.

The University of Maine’s Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research in Franklin has worked on land-based aquaculture and is involved with a private company, Maine Halibut Farms, that hopes to locate its facility at the former naval base in Corea. These two efforts could likely benefit from one another.

Fish farming was thought to hold much promise for Maine a decade ago. That promise remains unfulfilled, but growing fish on land could breathe new life into it.