54 



Lay out to the committee in an order of priority if you would the 

 CTeatest restraints on moving forward. What are the problems and 

 barriers to our really being whole hog involved in this? 



Dr. Sandifer. Mr. Chairman, if I may, that depends on who you 

 speak to. The industry as a whole sees the immediate requirements 

 of today, whereas the technologists, the technicians involved, tend 

 to look a little bit broader. From the standpoint of what the indus- 

 try seems to see in the marine environment, it would be a confus- 

 ing, often overlapping, permitting and regulatory process that 

 makes it extremely difficult to get into business in the coastal zone 

 at all. 



There are substantive other issues related to the technology 

 base, and specifically to the supply of seed animals. There are valid 

 concerns that the seed be sufficiently free of diseases or parasites 

 associated, and of the correct genetic stock so they pose no danger 

 to wild stocks. But, I think the biggest single concern is how does 

 one get through the regulatory maze to get into business in the 

 first place? 



Senator Kerry. Now, are the restraints on aquaculture legiti- 

 mate, or are they just bureaucratic and sort of ignorant of some of 

 the impacts at this point? 



Dr. Sandifer. Senator, I would have to say it is a combination 

 of the two. Many of the restraints are correct and well meaning. 

 Most of us who have been involved in aquaculture development for 

 some time have had a rude awakening over our careers that aqua- 

 culture is not quite as environmentally clean as we thought it was 

 when we started out. And it turns out that aquaculture develop- 

 ment has some environmental costs associated with it. However, 

 those costs are generally substantially less than are found in many 

 other kinds of industrial or coastal development. The problem be- 

 comes one of correct classification and treatment of those effects. 



For example, aquaculture effluents are generally termed to be in- 

 dustrial effluents. They are not industrial effluents. They are the 

 equivalent of agricultural effluents, in most cases without the 

 chemicals or with relatively few chemicals. It is mostly biological 

 oxygen demand, and it needs to be treated in a very different way 

 from individual wastes. 



Then there is the whole issue of how do acquaculturists have ac- 

 cess, fair access, to use of public resources in the same manner, for 

 example, that commercial and recreational fishermen do, have 

 some protection for the use of those public resources and at the 

 same time allow the public to maintain its right to the use of the 

 resources. That is where it gets to be a very complex issue in the 

 coastal zone. 



Senator Kerry. Now, is this mostly as to offshore bay or estuary 

 aquaculture or as to onshore wetlands or both? 



Dr. Sandifer. Both. And in fact, some of the more recent rec- 

 ommendations have been for at least the research community, 

 within NOAA specifically and within other Federal agencies, to 

 look at the options for moving aquaculture operations to higher 

 ground, out of the immediate coastal zone. That was the closed sys- 

 tem culture approach that Dr. Baker referred to. But you still have 

 to take in some water and you still have to discharge some water 

 some time. The laws of physics still apply. 



