Focus of Work: Marine aquaculture (farmed seafood) is crucial for boosting seafood production, creating jobs, rebuilding protected species and habitats, and enhancing coastal resilience. In the United States, an Aquaculture Opportunity Area (AOA) is a federally designated area that is potentially suitable for commercial aquaculture. NOAA Fisheries and NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) conduct rigorous spatial planning and extensive public engagement to identify AOAs in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Southern California Bight, and Alaska. A central goal is to minimize impacts on natural resources, reduce user conflicts, and maximize public input.
Our Approach: For several years, Seatone has supported NOAA’s work across each of these regions by providing facilitation support for stakeholder and tribal engagement workshops, interagency coordination, and internal planning among regional aquaculture coordinators, spatial planning specialists, and NOAA’s Office of Aquaculture. We help NOAA and its partners to plan strategically, build comprehensive databases to inform spatial analysis, and gather and integrate public input throughout the process. We work closely with NOAA and its partners to document tribal listening sessions, summarize key findings from facilitated workshops, and prepare aquaculture permitting guides.
Key Outcomes: NOAA anticipates that the outcomes of these collaborative efforts will, in multiple regions of the United States, assist coastal managers, communities, indigenous communities, industry and other organizations with planning for future development of sustainable aquaculture. Seatone’s efforts have amplified the public’s voice in the AOA planning process, strengthened collaboration with NOAA’s state partners across different regions of the U.S., deepened understanding of the interaction between aquaculture and protected species, and improved coordination on aquaculture data collection and reporting within the nation’s fishery information networks.
Click the links below or any report cover image to access Seatone-led work products, prepared with our agency clients, which support sustainable aquaculture development in waters of the United States.
