Re-printed courtesy of KETCHIKAN DAILY NEWS
Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008

OceansAlaska gets $1 million

By SCOTT BOWLEN
Daily News Staff Writer
The OceansAlaska Marine Science
Center has secured a $1 million federal
matching grant toward a shellfish
research, development and training
dock that will be the center’s first
facility at its 28-acre site at George
Inlet.
The Ketchikan-based OceansAlaska
hopes the approximately $2 million
concrete float, warehouse and training
facility will be in place by late
summer 2009, according to John
Sund, project manager for the private,
nonprofit organization.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “We’re just
real happy and excited we got this
process through and we can start
making physical things happen.”
OceansAlaska must provide matching
funding for the EDA grant, and
the board has identified sufficient
non-federal funds for the match,
according to Sund.
The “Shellfish Development
Demonstration Farm and Training
Facility” results from two
OceansAlaska research projects during
the past two years that focused on
the viability of shellfish mariculture
as a way to create economically and
environmentally sustainable, yearround
jobs in Alaska, especially
Southeast and rural Alaska.
“The challenge of developing this is
how do you start something that
doesn’t exist ... to attract the private
investment to come to Alaska to
invest the money to get the farms up
and going,” Sund said.
A strategic plan published in January identified the shellfish facility as one
of the infrastructure components needed to provide early and ongoing help for
the industry.
One of its roles is research into gear technology and best practices for raising
geoduck clams and “suspended culture” species such as oysters, according
to Sund.
“The facility will be capable of growing shellfish and undertaking development
projects that will promote new efficiencies and technologies for the
shellfish industry,” according to an announcement regarding the project from
OceansAlaska Marine Science Center Executive Director John Tighe.
Training is another aspect.
“It will provide a platform for training new entrants who want to come into
the industry, if they need some help or assistance in certain areas,” Sund said.
OceansAlaska has a memorandum of understanding with the University of
Alaska Southeast to work together in the training process, according to Sund.
There’s also an MOU with the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District
to “help incorporate the education functions of parts of this with the school
district,” he said.
As designed now, the facility will have a concrete main float measuring 40
feet by 130 feet, upon which will be a 24-foot-by-7-foot operations support
warehouse and training building, according to OceansAlaska.
It will include four concrete floats for growing shellfish, and a floating
upweller system for culturing shellfish seed. These structures will be attached
to the main float, according to OceansAlaska.
Work on the access roads and pads for the marine research center has begun
already, according to OceansAlaska.
OceansAlaska’s long term plan for the 28-acre site located off of South Tongass
Highway is a full marine science center “with the primary goal of fostering sustainable
use of Alaska’s marine environment through research and education
aided by marine exhibits,” according to the OceansAlaska announcement.
Specific to shellfish mariculture, Sund is optimistic about the possibilities in
the state.
“In the end, Ketchikan and Southeast Alaska, I think we can develop several
hundred jobs over the next 20 years — and develop a new industry at the
same time,” Sund said. “We have an abundance of clean water and habitat. ...
It’s a great opportunity. It’s just going to take a lot of work to make it happen.”
Citing the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association as a successful
example, Sund said it will take a “real partnership” of federal and state
governments, private industry, private sector investment, and private nonprofit
groups to develop the shellfish industry
“But you need the private sector, and in this case, the private nonprofit sector,
molding it together,” Sund said. “And OceansAlaska has taken the lead in
putting that development structure together.”