“Barring the unforeseen, the project—supported by the National SeaGrant Program, and in partnership with University of Miami—should now be able to move forward by early 2027,” said Ocean Era’s Founder and CEO, Neil Anthony Sims.
“One of the primary goals of this demonstration project is to show the Florida fishing and boating communities that offshore aquaculture will be something that they will love. We now, finally, have our chance to do that,” said Sims.
“A further goal was to pioneer the permitting process for offshore aquaculture in Federal waters in the Gulf. So, as a demonstration project, it has been tremendously successful, in that it has demonstrated with abundant clarity that regulatory reform is sorely needed.”
Sims listed the underlying imperatives for offshore aquaculture: “The USA has a seafood trade deficit of over $20 billion per year. We believe that Americans should be growing our own fish, instead of putting all of our eggs in other countries’ baskets. We believe that we can create good-paying aquaculture jobs here, in the USA, rather than shipping jobs overseas. We believe that Americans want the food safety and environmental safety assurances that come from a local seafood industry that we manage to our own standards. But to be able to make this happen, the current regulations around offshore aquaculture clearly need to change.”
The project faced a protracted 8-year permitting process that involved navigating through nine different Federal and State laws, and engaging with twelve different federal and state agencies, as well as responding to anti-aquaculture activist appeals that were consistently rejected as baseless by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board.
“This proposed project is a very small-scale, temporary demonstration—just a single, small batch of fish. The project will be closely monitored for environmental and social impacts, and the results will all be made publicly available,” said Sims.
Sims expressed hope that Congress could help resolve the current constraints: “There is presently moving through Congress—with strong bi-partisan support—the Marine Aquaculture Research for America Act (the MARA Act), that would authorize NOAA to proceed with permitting additional demonstration offshore projects around America’s coastlines. This would then expand the opportunities for communities, scientists, and regulators to better understand the actual benefits that would spring from this industry, and where the real issues lie. We hope that the challenges that our Velella Epsilon project has faced will help our legislators understand the very real costs of continuing the status quo.”
GulfStream Aquaculture, LLC.—a Florida-based environmental consulting company—led the project’s permitting process, as a largely probono effort. Dennis Peters—GulfStream’s principal—provided over $450,000 worth of environmental and technical expertise and advice to the project over the 8 years.
“I have been fishing and boating in the Gulf for almost all of my life. I have also worked in aquaculture projects throughout the Americas, and I am honored and excited to help bring this opportunity to fruition,” said Peters.
Sims was one of the original founders of what is now the Blue Ocean Mariculture farm, offshore of Kona, Hawai’i. This farm has been producing up to 900 tons/year of sashimi-grade Hawaiian Kanpachi® for over 20 years. Extensive environmental monitoring has shown no significant impact on water quality, or on the seabed beneath the net pens, or the pristine stretch of coral reef located a mere half mile inshore of the farm site.
Earlier iterations of the Velella Projects were located in Federal waters offshore of Kona. These proved to be spectacular fishing hot-spots, with the net pen acting as a Fish Aggregating Device (FAD), attracting wahoo, mahimahi, tuna, and marlin. The plan for the Velella Epsilon is to now bring this experience to the Gulf fishing community.
“We want Florida folks to see for themselves, rather than have their decisions made for them by activist groups who blithely ignore the evidence in the water. That’s the whole point of a small-scale demonstration project,” said Sims.
Sims also noted that the world’s leading, science-driven environmental NGOs, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy, all now advocate for expanding the world’s supply of seafood through aquaculture.
“The Environmental Defense Fund—through the Coalition for Sustainable Aquaculture—is leading the advocacy for the MARA Act. That speaks volumes.”
“The environmental arguments all now underscore the need for increasing aquaculture production—it is one of the least impactful forms of animal protein production. We in America need to be developing innovative, sustainable ways to do this here, in our waters, and to be creating jobs and maintaining working waterfronts in our towns. That is the very essence of food security.”
