Name: Michael A. Rice
Position: Associate professor of fisheries and aquaculture, University of Rhode Island
Background: Professor with tenure since 1993; visiting Fulbright professor, Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University, Philippines, 1996-1997; assistant professor, University of Rhode Island, 1987-1993; research assistant, University of California, Irvine, 1985-1987; mariculture extensionist, U.S. Peace Corps, Philippines, 1981-1985.
Honors: Citation for Outstanding Contributions in Aquaculture Research Teaching and Extension by the Rhode Island House of Representatives and the Rhode Island Secretary of State, 1999.
Education: Ph.D., comparative physiology, University of California, Irvine, 1987; Master of Science, marine biology, University of California, Irvine, 1981; Bachelor of Science, University of San Francisco, 1977.
Age: 44
Family: Married, one daughter
Residence: Peace Dale
RICE BELIEVES DEM and its agricultural division should be run separately.
PBN: Other countries, and certain U.S. states, have well-developed aquaculture industries. To what extent is Rhode Island exploiting its aquaculture potential?
RICE: I think the potential is fairly high in Rhode Island for a development of an aquaculture industry. First of all, Rhode Island should be known (as a state in which) aquaculture is part of a very distinguished historical past. The most visible was the Narragansett Bay oyster industry around the turn of the century. It basically declined in the 1930s for a number of reasons. Another thing we should be proud of in the past, the Department of Environmental Management has its roots in what is known as the old Rhode Island Shellfish Commission. They established a lobster hatchery at the turn of the century in Wickford that went on until the 1940s or so. The technology for raising lobsters was developed here in Rhode Island.
From a business point of view, we have a fairly developed seafood marketing infrastructure. We have the educational infrastructure here. Another thing we’ve got is very, very good water quality, which is absolutely important for any kind of shellfish aquaculture or fin fish aquaculture, for that matter.
If Rhode Island has the tradition, the clean water, and the educational resources, what does it still need?
More understanding from the public and more of a steady interest, if you will, from the financial community. And I think that’s one of the key roadblocks to this whole thing. Let me illustrate how that is. If you were to set up a used car lot, you would go to the bank, you’d fill out your application for a loan, and they’d send you away, they would pull up the RMA Associates book and look up used car lots and take your numbers from your application and see if everything (matches). (With) aquaculture that’s absolutely not so. You put in your application, they go to the RMA book, look for aquaculture, no one home. Nothing there. Nothing. So what they do is find a comparable industry. But there isn’t a developed database on financial performances. So aquaculture is pretty much delegated to other means for financing. Venture capital markets, families financing the thing off their credit card at outrageous interest. You’ve got government loan programs like the Slater Fund. You’ve got things which are basically stacking the whole thing against any potential upstart companies.
So, the upshot of that is (that) probably before we see any glaring successes we’re going to have some glaring failures along the way. And depending on how the financial community looks at this, it could be very, very discouraging from an investment point. But what we’re trying to do is remove the roadblocks. The regulatory roadblocks are tremendous in Rhode Island. We’re trying to work with the Coastal Resources Management Council, with the Department of Health, educating, getting people on the same page, and attempting to streamline things, getting cooperation among the agencies instead of a competition with regulatory jurisdiction.
Other states have strong aquaculture industries for certain species. Why, then, are lenders so cautious about investing in aquaculture in Rhode Island?
In Idaho they’re the largest producer of farmed trout and they have a history of farmed trout that dates back to the early part of this century, and they have tremendous water resources there, there’s a certain amount of a track record in that industry. The largest producer of catfish – the largest aquacultured species in this country – is Mississippi. The catfish industry grew up as an adjunct to farming of other crops, soybean farmers and cotton farmers who converted land to catfish production, and it was a fairly simple transition, it essentially was a different crop. So it was easier for those local lending institutions to develop their own financial base on (aquaculture). In Connecticut they’re one of the largest producers of oysters, they have anywhere from a $50 to $60 million dollar a year industry – that’s pretty much dominated by a single company. And they have a track record for virtue of being there for a long time.
Up in Maine, they’re a large producer of penned salmon in the United States, they are really dominated by companies from New Brunswick, there’s international buy-in there. In terms of the financial structure, in each of the states, it’s a little bit different and it’s based on the history of the development of the industry, but in all of those cases there is no national database. If you look for aquaculture, you can’t find it. It isn’t there. And that’s one of the things that Bob Comerford in the business school would like to work on, and I’ve collaborated with him, (is) to put some grant proposals together to get some databases going.
The other thing that we’re working very, very hard with is the regulatory agencies. We’re working with DEM Division of Water Resources. We’re trying to break up some of the up-front costs in terms of an applicant going through the process of trying to educate the regulators as they go along. It’s not an easy task being a pioneer.
I think what will happen is, once the public and the regulators become comfortable with it being around, a lot of the problems will go away. Like anything new, there’s always some apprehension. That’s the biggest hurdle. Once that happens, I’m sure that streamlining of the process is possible.
Should DEM have its own aquaculture division?
One of the key problems here is (that) Rhode Island is the only state in the country without a standalone department of agriculture. It’s within DEM. Here the division of agriculture is part of an environmental protection agency, which is about as poor a mismatch as one can be. Typically, what you have is, each agency has a certain personality, if you will, and focus. Agriculture bureaucracies are focused into efficiency of production, environmental compatibility so that farm production isn’t damaged, so they’re trying to work with environmental compatibility from a multiple use standpoint. Environmental protection agencies, on the other hand, tend to (have) straight regulatory and policing function. And each is important. And each has a job to do. But the problem is (that) if you get the two agencies together they tend to be a little bit on the schizophrenic side. Are they fundamentally benign promotion? Or are they regulatory? And that’s where the schizophrenia arises. I would like to see a major firewall between those functions, and then we don’t get into the typical joke of, ‘We’re from the government, we’re here to help.’
You have written that when the Philippines dramatically increased its aquaculture production it did so at a great environmental price. What do you say to those who might argue that it would be difficult to have large-scale aquaculture here without running into serious environmental problems?
The answer to that is (that) I am highly doubtful that we are going to have very, very large scale aquaculture operations at any time in Rhode Island. I think that they’re going to be largely analogous to our agriculture on the land: Fairly small operators. We’re not going to have a situation of a return to a few large companies like there was at the turn of the century in terms of the oyster business. I think that our aquaculture as it’s going to develop is going to be fairly small scale, but it’s going to be specialty and niche marketing, that’s what basically our terrestrial aquaculture people are doing, focusing on very high value items and almost a guerrilla warfare of marketing – being able to find out where the markets are and supply to that market a very, very high quality product. Our largest oyster producer now is Moonstone Oysters, and they do just that. That’s where I see where we’re going.
Why did the Philippines have environmental problems because of aquaculture?
In the Philippines, typically the industry is dominated by the folks that, a few decades ago, dominated the sugar industry. And the areas where they are growing shrimp are the same areas where they used to be growing sugar cane. And when the world sugar prices collapsed, they converted a lot of coastal land to shrimp (farms) and basically got greedy with that and overstocked the ponds and got into very, very poor management practices. That need not be in terms of any kind of large scale operation. In a lot of cases there’s major failures on the government part, there’s not a strong environmental protection agency to rein things in. On top of that, there’s not a particularly good infrastructure within their departments of agriculture that would be looking for long-term ways to grow the shrimp. So it’s almost a fast-buck mentality. And believe me, right now, these same people are looking for whatever the next thing on the horizon that they could possibly get into. I don’t see that happening as likely here. We have a fairly good system in place to keep checks on (abuses).
Certain foreign countries are years ahead of the United States in their development of aquaculture industries. Is that simply because their fisheries collapsed before ours did?
That’s the big reason. In the mid ’70s, worldwide fisheries were (entering) a major crisis. Largely (in) the Western Pacific, particularly Japan and China, and the Eastern Atlantic, around Europe, those were the areas that in the mid 1970s were in trouble. At that time those were the major fishing fleets of the world that were sending deep water factory trawlers to within a few miles of the shore here to get our stocks. And the fact of the matter is, largely through reasonable management strategies, we had more fish than the Japanese and the Europeans. That directly led to the Magnuson Stevens (Fishery Conservation Management) Act of the mid 1970s which set up the 200-mile economic zone, and part and parcel of that (were) federal subsidies to build up our fishing fleets. That’s when the fisheries program started here at the University of Rhode Island, to train new fishermen to go out to the 200 mile (limit) and catch lots of fish.
But, while that was going on here, in Japan and Europe – their trawlers being excluded here – they put their effort into developing their aquaculture industries. So we’re in a 20-year lag, largely because we bought time for ourselves by reasonably good, or comparatively good, fisheries management.
But, it wasn’t looked at as what it was: buying time. There were people in the ’70s talking about how we should be developing an aquaculture industry, but not a single person was listening because it was boom times for fishing. Now, it’s no longer boom time for fisheries, and we are essentially going through the same social revolution, if you will, that occurred in Japan and the other countries of the world where aquaculture has been developing at a faster pace than us. The types of things, in terms of controversies, are not unknown elsewhere, and they are almost to be expected here.
What is the relationship between fishermen and aquaculturists?
In some ways we’ve seen some transition over the last few years. In the early part of the ’90s it was purely an adversarial relationship. Pure and simple. And that’s largely for a couple of reasons. Fishermen tend to be one of the last of the independent man type characters, almost analogous to the cowboy on the open range. On the other hand, you have aquaculturists who have to think about the future in terms of putting their seed stock in, and planning, and it usually has to be in a fairly fixed place to tend the livestock. And he has to be right there to tend the livestock no matter what, or else the fish or, like any kind of farming, if you’re not managing it you’re going to have troubles. They’re two different mindsets, and they don’t mix very well. Then on top of that, (fishermen) certainly don’t want aquaculturists getting too successful because they might cut into market share and affect the price of things. That’s how it was.
What has happened is that with the decline of the fisheries there has been a change in attitude. And to some extent the fishing community is saying to the government, ‘Please help us.’ And there’s been something of a realization that maybe we have been our own worst enemy in terms of going out and over-fishing things. There’s been at least a recognition of the notion that certain other states like Florida and others are a bigger threat to the existence of the fishing community here in Rhode Island than our local aquaculturists are. Rhode Island doesn’t, for example, command the price of quahogs in the country as we once did in `80s. At one time we produced 40 percent of the entire national supply, now it’s down to about 8 (percent). And that’s largely due to very, very aggressive efforts in other states to improve their shellfisheries and aquaculture from fairly large producing states like Florida.
So, there’s been a perceptible change in attitudes. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that people are holding hands and are all happy about this. But I get a lot of phone calls from a lot of people that are inquiring about aquaculture. And frankly, they’ll tell me, ‘Don’t say that we talked, but I’m just trying to learn about this, because I might want to get into this.’ That’s been a big change in this decade.
One of the selling points of aquaculture is that it can provide a steady supply of a high-quality product. But do aquaculturists have to charge more for their product because of the high cost of the production process?
In a sense yes. Aquaculture will never replace wild fisheries in any way, shape, or form, because production cost, generally, tend to be high. Wild-catch fisheries will never be replaced by aquaculture, but they should be seen as a complementary source that basically smoothes out the highs of the booms and bust cycles in the seafood markets.
Can a consumer tell the difference between a wild-catch fish and one raised by an aquaculturist?
Can’t tell the difference at all.
