A press release provided by NOAA for the Atlas for Aquaculture Opportunity Areas states that the effort for this atlas is part of the NOAA’s commitment to prioritize American seafood competitiveness and strengthening the nation’s seafood industry to reduce reliance on foreign imports as well as creating employment.
One of the lead authors and spokesperson for the publication is James A. Morris, Jr., a national marine ecologist with the Marine Spatial Ecology Division of NOAA in Beaufort, NC. He provided these details for the two year study:
“So our team in NOAA works to bring together many different types of data. We work to build these ecosystem based models that bring in all the human resources and industries that work in the coastal zone and coastal oceans, as well as all the natural resources.”
The publication focuses on 10 study areas centered around the population centers of Juneau, Sitka, Petersburg, Wrangell, Craig, Ketchikan, Seward, Valdez, Cordova and Kodiak Island. Seward..Morris provided these details about the Atlas in general with few details specifically related to south central Alaska:
“The Atlas is about 1000 pages. We cover a number of different study areas and identify essentially around 77 areas that could be considered for aquaculture opportunity areas. Those are, that is an initiative within within NOAA that we work with states and federal agencies to identify areas that have, you know, higher higher promise, higher opportunity in the coastal area, crop culture development, and then, and then those areas, environmental review is done for those areas that meet the highest level of suitability. And then that essentially paves the way, or makes it, you know, easier for industry to get developed.”
The atlas states one feature of the Seward opportunity area that overlaps with marine bird concentration areas. The four sizable colonies in this study area, including Cape Resurrection, Hive Island, Rugged Island, and Cheval Island. Public comments that came in from this study area noted that concern.
Another comment submitted, noted the remote nature of the Seward AOA sites and potential challenge that posed for compliance with USACE permit conditions that often require mandatory in-person monitoring visits weekly in winter and biweekly during fall and spring. The sites identified are not accessible by the road system but located near the mouth of Resurrection Bay.
The Atlas provides details of the general History and Current Status of Aquaculture in Alaska:
Alaska has a long history with aquaculture, with evidence of clam gardens dating back to the late Holocene or roughly 4,200 years. Modern aquaculture in Alaska dates back to the late 1970s, with a handful of farms in Southeast Alaska focused on Pacific oyster culture. The state experienced modest growth until the development of a formal regulatory framework under the Alaska Aquatic Farm Act in 1988. The Aquatic Farm Act authorized the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) to issue permits for the construction or operation of aquatic farms and hatcheries to supply aquatic plants or shellfish to aquatic farms. In 1990, Alaska House Bill 432 became law, prohibiting the farming of finfish in the state.
The executive summary of the Atlas states that while identifying AOA options can help applicants with site selection and environmental analysis, it is not a preapproval for any location. Applicants for future aquaculture operations will still have to go through the full state and federal permitting and environmental review processes. With that in mind, it is the intent that this work will inform and empower aquaculture proponents and coastal managers to realize the full potential for aquaculture development in Alaska state waters.
As a NOAA employee based out North Carolina, Morris had comments related more to the state of Alaska more than specifically towards the region of Resurrection Bay. He ended his conversation with KBBI with these comments:
“We have performed studies like this all over the US and Alaska certainly is a wonderful, diverse, biologically diverse, rich with rich with culture and tradition and coastal, coastal heritage. And that, to me, is something that that that really popped out about Alaska. We all know the special place we worked as you, as you, I hope you have had a chance to thumb through the Atlas we wanted to capture, to the extent possible, the beauty and majesty of states and of the coastal environment. And I hope that you, hope you are pleased with that as you flip through the Atlas and could tell from the pictures and the narrative stories that we tell around all the natural resources and industries and those things that rely on and are part of, you know, Alaska's coastal waters, that's the one thing that's that, to me, is the is the majesty of the State.
Weatherly Bates, a local shellfish farmer in Kachemak Bay, shared comments on the Atlas in relation more specifically to the region of Homer and Kachemak Bay suggesting that
the AOA atlas was well planned, widely reviewed and will hopefully bring a wider overview and good perspective when planning mariculture in Alaska. She said that as far as she knows, Kachemak bay was not included because there isn’t much room for further development with many existing uses including permitted aquatic farms and critical habitat areas.
The full NOAA publication is available at: https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/72440.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
