PORTLAND, Maine — The Brunswick-based aquaculture company Acadia Harvest Inc. has won a $657,685 federal grant to farm fish in a land-based system that would farm various aquatic species at the same time.
The company is undertaking its research alongside the Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research in Franklin and the University of Maine.
Edward Robinson, chief business officer for the company, told Mainebiz the latest grant is its largest so far.
In its grant award under the Small Business Innovation Research program, the National Science Foundation’s abstract for the project, the company aims to “demonstrate an entirely new approach farming seafood.”
Its system would grow various complementary types of sea life together, in a system where the waste of one species would serve as nutrition for others. Building such systems on land would eliminate finding ideal natural habitats for aquaculture establishments and avoid the chance of causing or being affected by environmental hazards.
By the grant’s end date of February 2017, the company hopes to deliver a demonstration of it along with a computer model built to manage the operation.
In 2012, the company won a $249,491 grant from the Maine Technology Institute to develop a system that would produce black sea bass and yellowtail fish.
The company does business as Acadia Harvest but is registered as RAS Corp., a name it previously used during its efforts to open an aquaculture facility in Harpswell.