California-based, offshore aquaculture startup, Catalina Sea Ranch, has raised US$1.825 million in seed funding from Southern California-based investors.

 

Located at Terminal Island in the Port of Los Angeles, Catalina Sea Ranch has secured the first permit for offshore aquaculture in U.S. Federal waters from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The 100 acre operation plans to have the capacity to produce 2.5 million pounds of sustainably produced shellfish per year, grown 30 feet under the surface of the ocean, six miles offshore of Huntington Beach, California.

 

This investment, which brings the company’s total investment corpus to date to $2.855 million, will be used to finance the first phase of its aquaculture facility and to introduce its monitoring system. Mussel seeds, buoys, floats ropes and anchors have been ordered and the company’s first mussel harvest is planned for the end of 2016.

 

Philip Cruver, President and CEO of Catalina Sea Ranch remarked: “This investment will allow us to build out phase one of our ranch and deploy the offshore technologies for demonstrating no negative impact,” said Philip Cruver, President and CEO of Catalina Sea Ranch in a company statement. “Regulators, and other stakeholders will be able to monitor our shellfish ranch in real-time using the Internet. This will provide data for collaborative scientific analyses to develop best practices and responsible regulatory criteria for the future of marine spatial planning in U.S. Federal waters.”

 

Since 1950, aquaculture has been the fastest growing segment of global food production, growing on average at 9% per year. A World Bank Report issued on February 5, 2014 stated, “Aquaculture will provide close to two thirds of global food fish production by 2030 as catches from wild capture fisheries level off and demand from an emerging global middle class, especially China, substantially increases.”

 

Currently, the U.S. is carrying an $11 billion seafood trade deficit, and the Catalina Sea Ranch venture, with its use of advanced communication technologies and monitoring systems, will be able to serve as a source of data useful in the adoption and expansion of global offshore aquaculture.