Because the U.S. maintains a trade deficit of over $20 billion annually from importing seafood and that more than half of that product is farmed, it is well-accepted that the U.S. must increase its domestic production. The greatest opportunity to realize this goal is to use the open ocean where conflicts with other users are minimized, water quality is high and the impacts of operations to the environment can be mitigated. In 2013 the FAO published A global assessment of offshore mariculture potential from a spatial perspective which provided measures of the status and potential for offshore mariculture development. The primary deciding factors were depth (25 to 100 meters), current speed (0.35 to 3.5 km/h) and distance from port (<25 NM), and within those ranges, the report concluded that the U.S. has more open ocean space available for marine farming than any other country. In response to this necessity, Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute has worked over the past two-and-half decades with several investment groups, most recently Pacific6 based in Long Beach, California, to obtain permits to grow a local species, CA yellowtail (Seriola dorsalis) for the expanding U.S. market. The proposed farm, Pacific Ocean AquaFarms, represents an important and timely review of the opportunities for and limitations to the advancement of marine aquaculture in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone and for the need for new tools to advance that goal.
The farm needs specific permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) under the Rivers and Harbors Act and from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Clean Water Act, and farming operations have to be conducted under existing authorities for the production of food and protection of the environment. Since the project will require permits and approvals from several federal agencies, it is subject to environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) through consultation with all agencies responsible for management of natural resources. NEPA is a highly transparent and complicated review process that is structured around existing regulatory constraints and by the concerns of citizens that assists in the scoping of the review.
Although many of the concerns voiced about marine fish farming are generalize (e.g., use of fishmeal), most are highly site specific. Accordingly, site selection is critical to the permitting process as is evaluation of the site(s) being considered for localized impacts. Marine spatial planning tools developed by NOAA afford front-end assessments of promising farming sites that can meet operational criteria as well as mitigate conflicts with other user groups and protected resources. Advancements in effluent and depositional modelling can be used to select sites that avoid negative impacts from farm operations and escapement models are available to assess how the escapement of farmed fish (considered to be a pollutant) might impact the fitness of the wild stocks of fish. Use of these tools on the POA project can be precedent setting for subsequent permitting efforts, but the costs can be prohibitive to the applicant. For marine farming to advance, the use of these tools should be normalized and underwritten by the agencies.