“There are other environmental, technical, and social aspects of offshore ocean farming that we did not attempt to address in this study,” Wikfors said. Recommended depths can also be adjusted to future temperature increases associated with climate change. With current farm designs, it should be possible to adjust the depth of mussel ropes, keeping them within their ideal temperature range. Promising local areas have shallow temperature gradients, such as off Long Island, Cape Ann, Massachusetts and off New Hampshire. In this phase of the study, Mizuta and Wikfors were assisted by researchers at the Northeastern Massachusetts Aquaculture Center at Salem State University’s Cat Cove Marine Laboratory, which maintains the experimental farm. Using these data, they confirmed satisfactory mussel feeding, digestion and food assimilation functions. The Milford researchers measured biodeposition, an indicator of feeding success, at an experimental shellfish farm off Rockport, Massachusetts to validate predicted depth. The farm boundary marker is at left in the background. The Right Depth, LocationĪ line with blue mussels attached (right). Environmental data were collected at the same time. Temperature affects the ability of the mussels to adhere to farming rope and to survive, while chlorophyll concentration provides an estimation of food availability.Īt an experimental mussel farm off Cape Ann, they measured mussel feeding performance in spring and summer to confirm that mussels were at the ideal depth. They conducted a habitat suitability analysis based on open source temperature and chlorophyll data from national datasets. These depths would maximize the production efficiency of commercial offshore farming operations. Mizuta and Wikfors focused their research on finding the optimal submersion depth for longlines and mussel ropes. This is considered a highly suitable area for the development of ocean farming activity. It also reports some of the first measurements of mussel feeding performance in offshore New England.
coastal shelf ecosystem for aquaculture suitability.
The study may be the first using an historical series of environmental data to examine a large area of the Northeast U.S. Mussel biodeposition, or mussel feeding, experiment at sea. “This is supported by national economic data, which is the topic of our next publication.” Mizuta is a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Milford Laboratory in Milford, Connecticut. “There is great potential for sustainable farming of shellfish in New England federal waters,” said lead author Darien Mizuta. This is especially true when some uses must be excluded so that others may thrive. If farms are going to compete with other uses, then managers and entrepreneurs alike need to know as much as possible about the requirements and benefits of offshore shellfish farms. They argue that finding the optimum locations for farms, where the conditions can support the kind of production that will be profitable, is an essential first step in development. The authors acknowledge that these waters are busy and already subject to numerous competing and overlapping uses. Results were encouraging, but no commercial ventures have gone forward.
They were located at pilot mussel farms in Rhode Island Sound near Martha’s Vineyard, off the Isle of Shoals in New Hampshire, and north of Cape Ann in Massachusetts. Great Potential in New England's Offshore WatersĪ number of research projects have been conducted in the past few decades. They suggest that the most promising locations for mussel aquaculture among the six oceanic sites studied are off New York’s Long Island, north of Cape Ann in Massachusetts, and off New Hampshire. Their findings were published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. According to a study by researchers at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, several suitable locations can be found off the Northeastern United States. Offshore mussel farm sites need to have the right temperature, food availability, and the right currents.