The 2020 Executive Order on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth and subsequent development of Aquaculture Opportunity Areas (AOAs) has accelerated interest and resulted in a renewed push to develop offshore marine aquaculture. Permitting of offshore aquaculture remains a challenge, and among the various components are analyses to determine the environmental and ecological impacts of farm operations, which need to rely on science-based assessments. One of the primary ecological concerns is the potential for negative ecological and genetic impacts when farmed fish escape and encounter wild stocks; this topic is the most publicized when large scale cage failures occur. NOAA Fisheries and ICF have developed a scientific decision-support tool called the Offshore Mariculture Escapes Genetics Assessment (OMEGA) model, to understand the potential impacts of farm escapes to marine resources ( through risk assessment analyses), and to aid the industry and regulators in defining how offshore farms can operate to avoid impacts.
OMEGA is a mathematical model with inputs under three broad parameter categories: wild population biology and stock assessment, cultured population and aquacultur e operations, and interactions between cultured and wild populations. We are using OMEGA to conduct primarily two types of analyses. The first type is risk assessment scenario modeling for a range of species, escape levels , escape categories, and production levels ; this modeling helps set boundaries and conditions to avoid impacts from escaped fish. These analyses can be used to help inform environmental impact statements (EISs) and will be a component of the Programmatic EISs for the AOAs . The second type is project level assessments for specific farm (or planned farm) operations. In these assessments, anticipated farm parameters (e.g. target production levels, projected farm expansion, net pen infrastructure, harvesting schedules, brood source, and other characteristics) are explored to determine if the operation will avoid impacts from escaped fish, and help t o identify alternatives for current or future plans, as needed . The presentation will go through examples of these two types of analyses and demonstrate how producers can benefit from OMEGA modeling analyses. In addition, we will briefly describe one of our current projects aimed at identifying and understanding how newer and improved net pen technologies will avoid potential impacts of escapes.