Don’t Cage Our Oceans submitted comments in response to NOAA’s “Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Identification of Aquaculture Opportunity Areas in Federal Waters of Southern California.” Please note that we also endorse the comments submitted by the Center for Food Safety. We support Alternative 1, the No Action Alternative, in which no AOAs would be identified in federal waters …

Don’t Cage Our Oceans submitted comments in response to NOAA’s “Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Identification of Aquaculture Opportunity Areas in Federal Waters of the Gulf of Mexico.” Please note that we also endorse the comments submitted by the Center for Food Safety. We support Alternative 1, the No Action Alternative, in which no AOAs would be identified in …

Don’t Cage Our Oceans submitted comments to the Office of Protected Resources stating that we support NOAA’s proposal to classify certain aquaculture gear as “analogous” to gear used in commercial fisheries; indeed, a cluster of multiple net pens for finfish aquaculture, each possessing several mooring lines, do and will threaten the lives and behavior patterns of marine mammals. Read the …

Healthy Gulf wrote comments to the Environmental Protection Agency in response to the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for Ocean Era, LLC. The draft modified NPDES permit authorizes the discharge of industrial wastewater from a marine net-pen aquaculture facility located in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico approximately 45 miles southwest of Sarasota, Florida. The facility includes …

Don’t Cage Our Oceans submitted comments to the Board of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, asking them to codify the rule prohibiting finfish farms in Washington State Waters. The full comments can be read here.

DCO2 submitted comments in response to NOAA’s efforts to identify aquaculture opportunity areas in Alaska. In broad strokes, the request for comment asks stakeholders to provide suggestions over a number of parameters, as NOAA has begun with only considering state waters that are within 25 miles of a coastal community population center, and state waters that do not regularly experience …

At issue is whether Cooke Aquaculture, a Canadian farmed salmon company with a poor track record of environmental stewardship and social responsibility, should be granted a permit to transship farmed salmon from the state of Maine to Canada (for processing), using Canadian-flagged vessels. NMFS has published this opportunity for public review and to comment on this proposal. The application for …

NOAA is required to maintain a list of fisheries and their interactions with marine mammals. NOAA wants to include fish raised in fish farms to this list. Farmed fish is not a fishery! DCO2 submitted comments, outlining issues with offshore fish farming, concerns about finfish farm interactions with marine mammals, and the fact that fish farms are not a fishery. …

There are several reasons why the most prudent option is for NOAA to refrain from establishing AOAs in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Chief among these, is that NOAA lacks the legal authority to regulate aquaculture in federal waters. Furthermore, there are grave ecological consequences and inevitable harms to other ocean industries in these regions, should offshore finfish …

Thank you for this opportunity to provide feedback on NOAA Fisheries’ Draft National Seafood Strategy. Don’t Cage Our Oceans endorses the comments of our member organization, North American Marine Alliance (NAMA), and would like to provide additional comments. First, we welcome an open conversation on how NOAA Fisheries can support national seafood systems in a way that benefits people and …