|
FRANKLIN — The
walls are up and the roof is going on at the
University of
Maine’s new 24,000-square-foot
aquaculture research facility on Taunton
Bay. By all accounts, the
expansion is coming just in time.
Nick Brown, who
manages the Center for Cooperative Aquaculture
Research, said the demand from industry partners
looking for research space is high, and that’s
what the center is all about.
For the past four
years, the facility has been housed in a converted
commercial fish farm the university bought from
farm creditors in late-1999. Currently, the old
shore-based farm is home to research into the
commercial potential of halibut, cod, sea worm and
seaweed cultivation.
“And we don’t even
have the building yet,” said Jake Ward, executive
director of research and economic development for
the University of Maine.
He said completion
of the new building by January or February 2005 is
essential because of the 11,000 juvenile halibut
just brought in from Canada by new industry
partner Maine Halibut Farms Inc. There’s space for
them in the old farm while they’re young, but they
will be growing and will need the new space by
winter.
That new space is
more than just room for tanks of fish to grow.
Brown said the new facility offers advantages of a
controlled environment and a flexible space
designed for research.
“What we don’t
have here is environmental control,” he said,
looking around the old fish farm structure. In the
new building, “we’ll be able to dial in
temperature,” he said.
The filtering,
chilling and heating systems will allow the air
and water conditions to be carefully controlled.
In addition, he said, the building would be more
hygienic, designed to allow for easy wash downs
and climate control. The spaces available for
research allow for at least two distinct and
secure areas to house different research projects.
Brown said separate entrances amount to better
biosecurity as researchers can’t traipse from one
lab directly into another. He summed the new
building up as “a bit more like a hospital than a
farm.”
In addition to
space for the fish to be grown, the new facility
will have a designated space for production of the
minute brine shrimp and rotifers used to feed the
tiny halibut in the earliest independent stages of
life. At the other end of the scale, there will be
space to hose and maintain the brood stock of
large halibut Brown and his staff have acquired
from the wild and nursed into reproductivity over
the last few years.
Brown stressed the
flexibility of the facility. That’s essential to a
laboratory space that’s intended to do meet the
needs of an industry that’s as broadly defined and
quick to change as aquaculture.
The Franklin site
is where an aquaculture idea is put to the test of
commercial scale production. For the halibut
program, the fish will be grown out and introduced
to the market as a proof of the concept. Then the
company will strike out on its own, finding a site
and building a new facility somewhere else. At
that point, the next project will roll into the
research space.
And it will
continue to work that way as new projects from
emerging species to innovative
aquaculture-technology ideas use the space to take
a run at commercial viability. Once they’ve made
it over that hump and are a proven commercial
species, most new research that needs to be done
will be passed on to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s research lab and hatchery that’s to
be built next door to UMaine’s new building as
early as next year. That’s where work to aid in
the production of commercial aquaculture species
is to take place.
“It looks quite
likely that cod will be the next thing the salmon
growers pick up,” Brown said. The facility hosted
20,000 young cod belonging to Norwegian grower
Stolt Seafarm Inc. this spring. Those fish have
gone out to saltwater pens, and the more
troublesome halibut have taken their place in the
tanks.
From outside the
change in the facility is inspiring. The once
sleepy fish farm is abuzz with activity: Cranes
are lifting roof trusses in place, excavators are
backfilling around new foundations, workers are
wrestling reinforcing bar into shape for the next
concrete pouring.
Visually, the
difference between old and new is the difference
between farm and a university. The tin building
that has housed the farm and nascent research
laboratory looks like an aging warehouse next to
the substantial textured concrete of the new
building.
The price tag for
all the improvement was something worked out
roughly three years ago. It was pegged at an
estimated $2 million. Ward said that’s increased
to $2.5 million now with $1.2 million coming from
the federal Economic Development Agency, $550,000
from the University of
Maine, another $500,000 from
research and development grant money at the Maine Aquaculture
Innovation Center. Ward said the
remainder would be made up in smaller grants.
As for industry
demand for the facility, Brown seemed genuinely
surprised by the thought that it might not be
there. After all, he’s had about five projects at
work in the less than ideal conditions of the old
fish farm.
Ward confirmed
that he’s in contact with groups interested in
trying out some new technology ideas at the site.
He said there’s interest in the development of
algae as dietary supplements. In addition, he said
there would be additional work with the university
on designing systems for efficiency and possible
alternative energy uses at the farm.
“Mostly what we’re
hearing is the industry is applauding these
efforts in their beginnings,” Ward said. “They
only want it to happen faster and faster and
faster.”
As for the
permanent staff on site, it’s bound to grow as
more projects pile up. Excluding the busy
construction team, Brown counted up at least a
dozen workers who are on the site regularly
working on various projects. Including interns and
occasional extra workers at the SeaBait worm farm,
that number can double.
“We have to eat
lunch in two shifts now,” said Brown, grinning in
the modest lunchroom of the old fish farm.
It’s a problem
that doesn’t seem to bother him. Feeding fish is
where his immediate priorities lie. |
