WWW.WA S .ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • SEP TEMBER 2022 49 too, with low pH and high temperatures. P. yezoensis was native to the Sea of Japan, and there was a reason why it was not found in the Gulf of Maine. Trying to make it “happy” here is a lot like trying to make a fish “happy” out of water. Despite the challenges, CPI was able to produce harvestable nori. While there was no grading of sheets in the west, our sheets were comparable to 3-5 Y (US$0.03-0.05) sheets in Japan. The nori project was quite an adventure and provided me with an opportunity to grow in many different directions. In no way can it be called a financial success, but it did provide a living for me and 25 employees for nine years. The US Fish and Wildlife Agency, Sea Grant and the Maine Aquaculture Association provided some funding and I was required to provide workshops to train displaced commercial fishermen in the art of nori culture. This was futile; commercial fishermen do what they do because they are independent, their own boss, set their own hours and workdays. Nori culture is intensive farming, with demands comparable to dairy farming. The nets and systems had to be tended daily, no vacations during the growing season, no time off. Most commercial fishermen were not willing to adjust to this style of work. Further challenges included the difficulty of obtaining nearshore lease sites heavily competed for by myriad other interests. One couldn’t buy a piece of land in a properly zoned area and start a nori farm, no matter how affluent the proprietor may be. I was fortunate to find a couple of “sugar daddies”; the chair of my board was the president of Merrill Lynch and the board included his friend the head of IBM Japan; but these were venture capitalists and required 30 percent growth in profits year to year. By year five, I had completely filled my allotted lease site space of 53 ha, and it is difficult to increase farm production by 30 percent when the area couldn’t be increased. A couple of years of flat growth led to searching for alternative products in which I had no interest. The experience allowed me to be an aquaculture consultant for a few years, during which I became convinced that mariculture and commercial fishing must be stopped to save the marine environment. When I was Environmental Director of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, I developed an algal culture system, along with many others designing similar systems, using sewage treatment waste to produce diesel fuel. I used to give a (what I thought was) a pretty neat PowerPoint at national meetings on how to use the Las Vegas sewage effluent flowing into Lake Powell for an algal farm in the Mojave Desert that would produce enough oil and petrol to help the US become self-sufficient, at a comparable cost to un-subsidized oil ($9/gal). Exxon-Mobil recently aired commercials on their similar algae for fuel projects, highlighting the very real potential of that line of research. Brand The Standard in Growth and Survival Augmentation AlgaMac Enrich High in DHA and Natural Astaxanthin Celebrating 37 years serving the aquaculture industry with high quality diets, Artemia cysts and hatchery equipment including the AlgaMac series algae replacement/substitution rich in DHA for shrimp, fish and bivalve applications. AlgaMac-3050 Flake 20-22% DHA! - dry wt basis in crumble flake form. AlgaMac Protein Plus All celled DHA enriched Rotifer Growout Diet AlgaMac Enhance Two whole cell algaes with amino acids, nucleic acids, vitamins and beta-glucans Series World renowned AlgaMac Other high quality feeds from Bio-Marine: EconoMac Microparticle diet: Larval-PL stages Formulated Diets (4000 series) Micro-crumble diet: Larval-PL stages Astarose Natural source of Astaxanthin Spirulina Spray-dried Algae ArteMac Artemia Replacement Replace up to 100% Artemia with this nutritionally superior diet. MadMac Maturation Stimulator Fresh, make on-site. Rich in DHA. Aeration Filtration Heating Lab Supplies Meters Tubing & Hose UV/Ozone Water Quality Microscopes Pipe/Fittings/Valves Pumps Refractometers Systems Design ... and more. Hatchery Equipment & Supplies PO Box 5, Hawthorne, California 90250 USA Tel: 310-973-5275 / Fax: 310-676-9387 If you wish to test our diets, please contact us for a sample. Red AlgaMac Rotifer & Artemia Enrichment. New www.aquafauna.com email: aquafauna@aquafauna.com
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