Posted on 08/30/2003 3:22:39 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Thirty-three miles west-southwest of John's Pass, in a part of the Gulf of Mexico where the water is more than 100 feet deep, a Madeira Beach company wants to start a farm.
The crop: fish.
The company's plan calls for raising thousands of cobia, amberjack and other species in conical net cages anchored to the sandy bottom. Once the fish are big enough, they would be sold to seafood companies.
If Florida Offshore Aquaculture gets federal permits for a two-year experiment, the company's founders will establish the first fish farm ever attempted off Florida's coast, and one of the first in the gulf. Their cages would be farther from shore than any previous aquaculture operation in the United States.
"These guys are real risk-takers," said Paul Zajicek, a state aquaculture division employee who helped write the company's permit application. "They're on the cutting edge."
State and federal officials hope Florida Offshore Aquaculture can help launch a new industry that could create jobs and put native fish back on the table of area restaurants that now rely on frozen imports.
But the company also could launch a new source of pollution for the gulf, critics say. Unconsumed feed and fish waste can fall out of the cages, tainting the water. The caged fish can spread disease to wild fish, they contend. Similar concerns led Alaska to ban all fish farming in 1990.
"It's controversial," said Jim Fensom, chairman of the federal Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council. The council will discuss the Florida project at its Sept. 12 meeting in Baton Rouge, La.
Most of the work on fish farms in the gulf has been done by researchers looking for a new use for oil platforms. Florida Offshore Aquaculture is different.
None of the men who founded the company in February 2002 has experience with aquaculture.
Joseph "Jody" Symons, 55, is a retired Motorola salesman who filed for bankruptcy three years ago. Tommy Butler, 35, is a charter boat captain on probation for growing marijuana in his home.
And Thomas D. Powell, 55, is a computer expert who, in the 1970s, launched the Sound Advice electronics chain as a vehicle to launder profits from his drug smuggling operation. He lost his stake in the company while serving six years in federal prison.
Powell says he has put all that behind him. "It's like now it's a dream," he said.
Powell was born to a wealthy family. His uncle owned the elegant Belleview Biltmore Resort and Spa in Belleair.
At Madeira Beach Elementary, Powell befriended Symons. After graduating from Seminole High School, they went their separate ways.
Symons served in the Navy and graduated from Florida State University. He spent 24 years with Motorola, living in Tallahassee and selling two-way radios to state prisons.
When Symons retired three years ago and moved back to Pinellas County, he learned Powell had become familiar with the prison system too.
In the late 1960s Powell started dealing drugs. By the early '70s he was bringing in shrimp boats loaded with marijuana and making big bucks.
In 1973, Powell went shopping for a stereo system and wound up creating Sound Advice with the salesmen who waited on him.
When the authorities began closing in, Powell fled the country. In 1984 he was indicted on charges he had smuggled in more than 300,000 pounds of marijuana. Extradited from Sweden, he pleaded guilty. He now builds Web sites for seafood restaurants and charter boats.
Symons, meanwhile, had his own troubles. Three years ago, facing more than $60,000 in credit card debt, he declared bankruptcy. He says a nephew stole his identity and ran up bills without his knowledge.
Symons and Powell renewed their acquaintance over a computer. Symons needed one and hired Powell to build it. While watching Powell at work, Symons spotted a couple of files on aquaculture.
Both dated back a few years, to when Powell says he investigated starting a shrimp farm. Ultimately he decided it wouldn't make money. He also checked into offshore aquaculture and as a result, "I know a considerable amount about it," Powell said.
When Symons spotted the aquaculture file, Powell warned him it would take a lot of time to get started and the retiree said, "Guess what? I've got time."
Since then, Symons figures he has pumped more than $15,000 into the company. Powell said he has contributed nothing but expertise.
They recruited Butler, a Madeira Beach native who quit school after the sixth grade to fish. He runs a charter-fishing service featuring a boat he designed and built: the Reality Check, a 45-footer with twin turbocharged 350-horsepower motors that enable him to take clients far out in the gulf for deep-sea fishing and return the same day.
A fast boat is crucial for daily maintenance of an operation 33 miles out, a location Powell says Butler suggested. A closer location would be less than 100 feet deep, and would put the fish at risk from deadly Red Tide, Powell explained.
But aquaculture experts say the distance makes this project more difficult than any previous fish farm.
"It's hard to pay attention to something that far offshore," said John Ericsson, a former oil executive who has spent 14 years obtaining permits to cultivate cobia at old derricks close to the Texas and Alabama coasts. "It's tough to maintain security and control."
Federal officials have high hopes for aquaculture. They want it to become a $5-billion industry by 2025, creating 500,000 new jobs.
The United States imports $7-billion more seafood than it exports, most of it farm-raised. A thriving domestic aquaculture industry could ease the trade deficit.
But the government has done little to finance this new industry, which can face hefty startup costs. Symons figures his company will spend $120,000 each for its eight net cages. A year of feed would run $160,000 a cage. Stocking 10,000 cobia fingerlings could cost from $4,000 to $17,500 from a hatchery.
If they can find investors, though, the payoff could be a good one. Barring some calamity, such as a hurricane, he figures they could gross more than $370,000 on a single cobia harvest.
However, a new expense has cropped up: finding another boat. Federal fisheries officials told Symons and Powell recently they cannot use the Reality Check.
The problem was not Butler's 2001 guilty plea for growing 57 marijuana plants, or his no-contest plea to a domestic battery charge that same year. It was his violation of federal fisheries rules.
Three years ago he was caught running charter-boat trips with no license. He had caught too many amberjack and was trying to sell his catch, also a no-no. He was fined $6,000, and still owes nearly $2,000. Fisheries officials notified him two weeks ago he will lose his fishing permits if he doesn't pay up.
That doesn't mean Butler is out of the company, Powell said. It just means "we're going to have to hire another captain, and he'll have to supervise and stand on the sidelines," Powell said.
That wasn't the only glitch. Symons and Powell told federal officials the state's own fish hatchery at Port Manatee and biologists from the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg would help them tag the fish and check their health.
"That's incorrect information," said Port Manatee hatchery manager Bill Halstead said. "I don't have the capability to do that here."
While Symons and Powell have discussed their project with state biologists, "it never came up that our name was in it," said FMRI senior scientist George Henderson.
So this week Symons said he would take those portions out of the application too.
Symons and Powell did get some good news this week. Federal fisheries officials announced that as long as the project meets certain conditions requiring strict monitoring of the cages, it should have little or no significant impact on the environment.
Marianne Cufone of the Ocean Conservancy doesn't buy that. Salmon farming operations in other countries have exposed the problems with offshore aquaculture, she said.
In Canada, more than 2-million farm-raised salmon had to be destroyed in 2001 because they were infected. In Britain, more than a million fish have escaped from fish farms over the past six years, threatening the declining wild salmon population by gobbling up food and spreading diseases.
Powell contends it is unfair to compare their project with salmon farming, but Symons said: "If we're going to pollute, then we're going to shut it down."
FMRI's Henderson said he has mixed emotions about allowing this experiment to proceed.
"Half the time I scratch my head and say, "I hope this doesn't go anywhere,"' Henderson said. "And the other half I scratch my head and say, "We might learn something.' Of course, it might not be good."
- Times staff writer Terry Tomalin and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
And that line about "2 million" cultivated fish being destroyed in Canada couldn't possibly compare with the number killed by Mother Nature during a single red tide event.
Finally I'd be interested to know whether there's any real biological difference between a Mahi Mahi raised in an ocean net, and one that's grown up not-in-a-net. I suspect there's not, and that it's again a simple matter of aesthetics.
More of a matter of religion. These people tend to be true believers in Mother Earth.
The results of these experiments would be the fairest, most logical and most authoritative basis for a policy decision on this matter.
I don't think I would be investing in this company. Sounds like your typical Florida scam to me.
Unless it is land being cleared for farming, then it's a big no-no.
Nah, it comes ashore and uses public restrooms. Geezeee.....
There would be a potential pollution problem, but I don't know anything about it except that fish poop from my gold fish in my little ponds feed all sorts of algae. Of course they poop, and not they don't have legs.
The real issue though is the cloning of vast numbers of GM fish, and the release of them into the wild. In particular, this posed very severe problems on wild species in Britain because of variations in the mating habits. Wild fish were breeding with the GM ones, but the GM's were not able to reproduce. Bart Simpson would have understood.
Another matter is that fish farms on a huge scale will cost fisherman their eonomic independence. They will become relatively poorly paid employees of much larger firms instead of entrepeneurs, but that's probably unavoidable.
Given the history of these guys, I can't imagine they would not cut corners all over the map to get started. Perhaps they should consider running for political office, as there we can more readily afford a modest increase in the number of crooks employed.
But why not harvest the fish poop? It would make excellent fertilizer.
Well, that's different. That's natural.
Sort of like if lightening sets a forest on fire, that's natural. But if you burn a pile of leaves in autumn, that's pollution. (/sarcasm)
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