Diving into Alaska Aquaculture: An emerging industry provides sustainable food security and economic opportunity.

• Author: Newman, Amy
• Position: NATURAL RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Aquaculture is an industry Alaskans are probably familiar with, even if they're unfamiliar with the term itself.

Broadly, aquaculture refers to the cultivation of numerous species of fish and aquatic plants, such as shellfish, algae, and finfish, as well as enhancement and restoration projects designed to increase wild populations of specific species, says Heather McCarty, vice-chair of the Alaska Mariculture Task Force. Cultivation can be at aquatic farms or, if aimed at restoration and enhancement, hatcheries.

Though the two seem similar, cultivation in hatcheries differs from that done on aquatic farms.

"The enhancement of the salmon--a lot of people call it ocean ranching--you basically grow the organism to a juvenile size and then you release them to the ocean," McCarty explains. "Farming is where you raise an organism from the very first seed to harvestable size in captivity in one place on a farm. And so it's like growing wheat or peas or anything else."

As both a worldwide and statewide industry, aquaculture aims to counter the steady decline in fisheries and ocean populations by using the sea in the same way we farm the land.

"We are near the cap of what we can harvest from wild fisheries and wild populations, but we aren't near the cap of what we can grow in the ocean," says Melissa Good, mariculture specialist with the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program.

In Alaska, most aquatic farms focus on oyster and kelp production (farming of finfish is prohibited in Alaska), says Riley Smith, development director for the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation,

And the state has plans to grow the industry into a viable one that can serve as both a source of revenue and sustainable food.

Development of Aquaculture in Alaska

As an industry in Alaska, aquatic farming, or mariculture, is relatively new. The first fledgling oyster farms developed in the 70s, with interest in kelp farming kicking in around 2015, says Flip Pryor, aquaculture section chief with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's (ADF&G) Division of Commercial Fisheries.

In actual practice, however, aquatic farming in Alaska dates back hundreds of years.

"There has been aquatic farming in Alaska for at least 1,000 years," Good says. "If you look in Southeast Alaska, there is evidence of clam garden beds going back a very long time. There are traditional practices out there for aquatic farming. It's not necessarily a new thing to do this in Alaska, but we're certainly doing it in new ways."

Although interest in farming seaweed only began in the past decade, it has a long history of wild harvest in Alaska.

"Seaweed actually has been wild harvested for millennia in coastal Alaska, but only in 2014 did it market the first...