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Fishermen become farmers at 'Cod Academy'
Farm Manager Clayton Coffin, from Great Bay Aquaculture, at the cod farm in Sorrento, Maine.
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Cod Academy instructor Sebastian Belle (L), director of the Maine Aquaculture Association, talking to commercial fisherman and Cod Academy student Sewall Maddocks.
Jeremy Hobson: If you've eaten fish recently, chances are your dinner didn't spend his childhood swimming in the wild. He was probably raised in a tank
or an open-sea enclosure.
That was the case for more than half of the fish we consumed last year -- and that figure will probably rise. Starting this Monday, the state of Maryland will accept fish farming operations within the boundaries of oyster sanctuaries in the Chesapeake Bay. And now some fishermen in the state of Maine have decided to test the waters of the fish farming industry.
Tom Porter from Maine Public Broadcasting has the story.
Tom Porter: A fishing boat leaves the tiny village of Sorrento, and heads out into the Atlantic Ocean. The men aboard however, are not going fishing, but farming. They're students training to run their own fish farms at the nation's first ever "Cod Academy." It's a program in Maine set up with the help of $183,000 in federal funding.
Sebastian Belle: It's never been done before in America and we're trying to see if it's a model that has some potential.
Sebastian Belle is director of the Maine Aquaculture Association and the project's lead instructor. He developed Cod Academy along with the University of Maine and a couple of private companies.
Belle: This is a very small program, we've only got enough money to run it for one year. We're trying to raise money to run it for some additional years.
It's based on successful programs in Norway and Japan to help underemployed commercial fishermen, or ex-fishermen, find new opportunities on the water.
About a mile out to sea, eight circular pens emerge from the mist. They look like giant rubber inner tubes, covered over with netting to keep out seabirds. Each so-called cage can hold up to 50,000 cod. Belle says the strong Atlantic tides out here keep the fish healthy, even though they're penned in.
Belle: It's a native fish to Maine. The growing conditions in Maine are very good for cod and it's kind of a natural choice for us as a state.
Cod Academy students are taught every aspect of running a fish farm: How to maintain healthy stock, how to balance the books, and how to feed the fish.
Students fling scoopfuls of specially-formulated pellets into one of the giant pens. The surface of the water literally bubbles as thousands of cod come up to feed. Meanwhile an underwater camera makes sure the fish are all being fed.
Bill Thompson: I'm not getting it spread over there very well.
One of the academy's four students is Bill Thompson. He's a 59-year-old former commercial fisherman.
Thompson: If the wild stocks came back to their fullest capacity, they still wouldn't be able to feed the world so I think this is the way of the future.
Thompson is studying alongside his son Bill, Jr., who's been a working fisherman for most of his 39 years. But with a wife and four kids to support, he wants more job security. He and his dad plan to set up a family cod farming business after they graduate later this summer.
Bill Junior: I look into the future, I can't see my kids set up in what I'm doing right now as far as you know, lobstering, urchining, I don't want to see them get a source that's depleting every year.
Not everyone, though, is happy. Jen Levin heads the sustainable seafood program at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
Jen Levin: There are a number of concerns about aquaculture.
She says some critics are worried that bunching fish together in a farm setting could spread disease and breed unhealthy stock. But, she says the aquaculture industry is trying to address those concerns.
Levin: For example, the Global Aquaculture Alliance has developed best aquaculture practices that provide a certification for fish farms, making sure that it meets certain standards.
Levin says fish farms in Maine also use crop-rotation-type techniques, to help counter the threat of disease. That means moving the fish to a new stretch of ocean every 3 years.
From Sorrento, Maine, I'm Tom Porter for Marketplace.
Sounds good, but there are rackets everywhere when it comes to secondary education, and I, personally, have fallen victim to them in different industries, so I did some checking on this one. According to an article in The Working Waterfront out of Rockland, Maine, the NOAA awarded the MAA (Maine Aquaculture Association) $183,000 in funding for the initial coursework phase of the project, to be distributed to this “Cod Academy†(in partnership with the GBAM, CEI, and the CCAR of the University of Maine), whose students will be required to cough up 50% of the cost upon completion of graduation, should they decide to start a farm. (And they are not required to; you really have to be an investigative journalist, or a lawyer, to get to the fine print). To make a long story short: There will be “sponsoring partners†and “lenders†to assist if the students cannot raise the money themselves. The students must have experience in the industry in order to qualify, sign a letter of commitment, have a boat and up to $100k in collateral—in other words, skin in the game. The focus, ostensibly, is to help displaced commercial fishermen and revive a dying industry. In the Norwegian model, the government finances all. In this model, “Sponsoring partners will seek grants to fund the remaining 50 percent.†Who are these “sponsoring partners,†I wonder? In short, we have students who hold half of the financial responsibility coupled with investors who get all their money from government grants and subsidies, and whose only financial responsibility is to hold students accountable. Are banks or private lenders really ready to lend to displaced workers and business owners? Let’s not be naive, lenders don’t do risk, unless it’s with others’ money or taxpayer guarantees; at least they haven’t, last time I checked. I just can’t help thinking of the sort of business model and private/public partnerships that brought us Fannie Mae and subprime mortgage lenders.
You didn't cover my main concern about fish farming - what goes into that "specially formulated" fish food. I don't want to find out in a few years that the fish food came from China and includes melamine fillers or that it's ground up sheep's brains. I'm not even sure that leftover tuna parts is the right food for some fish.
