Design and Optimization Strategies for Processing Open-Ocean Mussels in the Offshore Environment

The demand for seafood in the United States is increasing and will continue to increase. Recent federal health guidelines call for Americans to double their consumption of seafood. The U.S. would need an additional 4 to 6 million metric tons of seafood per year over current levels if we doubled our consumption. If consumption remains at the current per capita levels, the U.S. will still require an additional 2 million metric tons per year by 2025. The US is making progress rebuilding wild fish and shellfish stocks, however the harvest of wild caught seafood will never keep pace with demand. Between 60 and 70 percent of all seafood consumed in the United States is imported,creating a trade deficit of nearly $9 billion annually. Forty percent of the imported seafood is farm raised, primarily in South America and Asia. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, mussel production worldwide was 1.8 million tons in 2003-2004, of which 90% were cultivated in some fashion. Production has been increasing roughly 50,000 tons each year for the past two decades. Eighty percent of the world's production comes from China, Spain, Italy, Thailand, New Zealand, France, and the Netherlands. Each of these countries produces over 50,000 tons annually. In 2003, Canada, ranked 20th in production, produced 20,000 tons valued at $31 million CDN. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service's Fisheries and Economics Division, the U.S. only produced 700 tons in 2002. User conflicts between riparian and business coastal users and potential aquaculture businesses have made coastal marine aqua farming a difficult process to permit and gain access to in the Northeast, with many communities having a "not in my backyard" position. This Phase I project endeavors to increase US production of farm raised mussels and reduce riparian impacts by continuing to pursue aquafarming in the offshore environment. In order to produce commercial quantities of seasonally consistent high quality product, this design stage project proposes to optimize wild seed collection approaches that will maximize longline space available for growout, as well as optimize the off-shore handling of mussels from harvest through processing/packaging by calibrating traditional processing equipment through shell configuration analysis, determining seasonal variation in meat yield, weight loss, and post-harvest mortality, as well as investigating optimum storage conditions to enhance shelf-life.