Two marine aquaculture research organizations in Down East Maine hope to make improvements to their physical facilities with grants they are slated to get from Maine Technology Institute.

Last week, MTI announced it was giving $2.6 million to the Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research in Franklin and $1 million to the Downeast Institute for Applied Marine Research & Education in Beals.

Brian Beal, a University of Maine at Machias professor and director of Downeast Institute, said Monday that the institute has to come up with a 50 percent match to receive the $1 million. He said the institute has $40,000 so far, but needs to finish raising the matching $1 million by the end of February.

“That makes it extremely difficult,” Beal said. “We have our work cut out for us.”

Beal said the institute hopes to use the money to build a new wharf at its property in Black Duck Cove on Great Wass Island. The previous wharf at the property, which the institute acquired in 2003, collapsed in April 2007, he said.

Researchers had been using the old wharf to support its sea-water intake, but since it collapsed have had to use a culvert that is mounted vertically on the old wharf’s sole remaining upright piling. A pump at the bottom of the culvert supplies water to the institute’s nearby research building, he said, except for at low tide, when the water level in the culvert is too low to pump.

“That means there are certain times of the day when we can’t do anything,” Beal said.

“It’s a completely unacceptable system. We’ve kind of limped along since [April 2007].”

A new wharf also would make it easier for researchers to get to and return from field sites by boat, according to Beal. He said the estimated cost of a new wharf is between $300,000 and $500,000.

The rest of the money would be used to design a new research building at the Black Duck Cove facility, Beal said. The institute has a 9,800 square-foot building that it uses now for raising juvenile shellfish such as lobsters, clams, oysters and scallops, he said. It would like added space for studying other types of marine species and perhaps for holding classes and seminars, and for hosting visiting researchers. The new building would be about the same size as the existing one, he said.

“We want it to serve as an incubator for businesses,” Beal said of the planned expanded facility.

CCAR, the site in Franklin, also will use its grant money to expand and improve its physical facilities, according to Dr. Nick Brown, the center’s director.

Brown said Monday that most of the $2.6 million grant will go toward construction of a new insulated, multipurpose building that will be erected around two existing large tanks at CCAR, which is located on the eastern shore of Taunton Bay.

The tanks are large enough that, if protected from the weather, they could be used year-round to raise large amounts of oceanic types of fish such as cod or tuna. Tuna, especially bluefin tuna, are quite large but could prove to be a highly lucrative aquaculture species if they can be raised in captivity, Brown said. There is no one in the United States researching aquaculture techniques for bluefin tuna, he said.

“It’s a billion dollar industry,” he said. “That’s really the Holy Grail [of aquaculture].”

Brown said that researchers want the building’s design to be flexible enough that it could be used for studying a variety of marine species or new types of aquaculture equipment. The projected cost of the new building, which would include two separate recirculation systems and an overhead track-mounted hoist system for moving aquaculture equipment in and out of the tanks, is $2.4 million.

Brown said the remainder of the $2.6 million grant would go toward outfitting research facilities inside a building that was completed on the CCAR campus in 2005.

A seeding facility for cultivating commercially viable seaweed species such as nori, dulse and kelp is expected to cost $100,000, he said. Equipment and systems for a cod broodstock facility inside the same building is projected to cost approximately $118,000.

CCAR, which is run by the University of Maine, has supplemented the MTI grant with its own funds and so does not need to raise additional money to pursue the projects, according to Brown. He estimated that construction of the new building likely would begin sometime next spring and could be completed as early as next fall.

btrotter@bangordailynews.net

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