Abstract
The University of New Hampshire established an open ocean aquaculture R&D facility 10 km off the New Hampshire coast in the Gulf of Maine in 1999. The offshore facility consists of a submerged mooring system that accomodates up to four experimental fish containment systems, submerged longlines for molluscan shellfish culture, and surface structures that include automatic feed buoys, fish tracking instrumentation, and environmental monitoring equipment. Over the last year, the AquaPod super(TM) and JPS net pens were evaluated at the offshore site. Atlantic cod were harvested and a second, higher density cohort was re-stocked. Also, blue mussel culture technologies were successfully transferred to a local fisherman who deployed 12 submerged longlines in open-ocean State waters.