Contacts:

Jesse M. Lepak, Ph.D., New York Sea Grant's Fisheries and Ecosystem Specialist, E: jml78@cornell.edu, P: 315-312-3042

Katherine Bunting-Howarth, J.D., Ph.D, New York Sea Grant's Associate Director, E: kathybh@cornell.edu, P: 607-255-2832

Kara Lynn Dunn, NYSG's Great Lakes Freelance Publicist, E: karalynn@gisco.net, P: 315-465-7578

Oswego, New York, September 30, 2019 - New York Sea Grant has recently been announced as part of a three-year, $1 million, multi-state Great Lakes Aquaculture Collaborative project designed to help Great Lakes states respond to consumer demand for freshwater fish and a $14 billion national seafood trade deficit identified by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service. 

Minnesota Sea Grant will serve as project leader with team members from New York, Illinois-Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. New York Sea Grant Fisheries and Ecosystem Specialist Jesse Lepak, Oswego, N.Y., will serve as the New York representative to the Great Lakes Aquaculture Collaborative.

Aquaculture involves the controlled-environment breeding, rearing, harvesting, and sales of marine and freshwater fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants. The Great Lakes Aquaculture Collaborative project work includes:

• working with state-level advisory groups and regional liaisons, 

• development of websites, listservs, and webinars to share and disseminate the best available science information on aquaculture, 

• an annual aquaculture event for sharing new research, data, and information relevant to the aquaculture industry, 

• evaluation of consumer perceptions, demand, and willingness to pay for aquaculture products

• interviews and survey of Great Lakes aquaculture industry producers to determine the research most useful to them

• policy analysis and gathering of stakeholder input to identify which barriers most constrain aquaculture industry growth in the Great Lakes Basin, and 

• identification of specific strategies, presented as recommendations to the Great Lakes aquaculture industry, on how to overcome challenges and how to potentially leverage opportunities. 

For more information on the Sea Grant announcement of $16 million in federal funding to advance sustainable aquaculture in the U.S., see: https://seagrant.sunysb.edu/seagrantaquacultureawards.

More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 33 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly. Our program also produces an occasional e-newsletter,"NOAA Sea Grant's Social Media Review," via its blog, www.nyseagrant.org/blog.