Video campaign launched to support push for US aquaculture law

US aquaculture lobby group Stronger America Through Seafood (SATS) has announced the launch of a three-part video series produced to illustrate the need for federal open ocean aquaculture legislation.

Through firsthand accounts from leaders across the seafood and agriculture supply chain, the series highlights how the lack of a clear federal framework is hindering the ability of the United States to responsibly grow its domestic seafood production.

“The nation’s top environmental organisations, along with seafood leaders, chefs, and academics in the US, agree that sustainable fish farming is essential to our nation’s future, but federal legislation is needed to launch an American open ocean aquaculture industry,” said SATS campaign manager Drue Banta Winters.

“Through firsthand accounts from across the seafood and agriculture supply chain, these videos highlight the benefits an expanded aquaculture sector would deliver to communities nationwide and explain why federal legislation is needed to enable the US to demonstrate that we can sustainably grow more of our own seafood in our own waters.”

Highly convulted process

The series will begin with the story of Neil Anthony Sims, a marine biologist and the founder and chief executive of Hawaii-based Ocean Era, Inc., who has spent more than seven years navigating a “highly convoluted” federal permitting process for one small proposed aquaculture demonstration farm: a single net pen in open ocean waters 40 miles off Florida’s Coast.

Ocean Era was founded as Kampachi Farms in 2011 by Sims and Michael Bullock, former executives of pioneering Hawaiian open ocean aquaculture company Kona Blue Water Farms. It later rebranded as Ocean Era to better reflect its broader mission of addressing global climate crisis, ocean acidification, and the need for sustainable, land-based, and ocean-based food production.

In the video, Sims says that the biggest challenge to growing “our own seafood in our own ocean” is the highly convulted permitting process in the US.

“The system as it now functions is broken. We want to have rigorous government oversight. We want for any applicant to be thoroughly vetted. But if we stand on the sidelines, then we are simply shipping our jobs, and American investment dollars, and American technology, overseas,” he concludes.

Benefits for agriculture

The next two videos highlight the benefits of open ocean aquaculture for American communities and families in both inland and coastal states.

Ohio soybean farmer Jerry Bambauer, a member of the Soy Aquaculture Alliance, explains how expanding US aquaculture would benefit agricultural communities by increasing demand for American-grown crops used in sustainable fish feeds, opening new markets and economic opportunities for farmers across America’s Heartland, including producers of soybeans.

In the final video, Sean J O’Scannlain, chief executive of Fortune Fish & Gourmet, details how open ocean aquaculture would complement the United States’ wild fisheries to expand seafood options for US families and increase domestic supply of sustainable seafood.

Grow more in US

“Eighty-plus percent of our seafood comes from other countries, so the answer to increasing our food security is to grow more seafood, right here in the United States. Open ocean aquaculture complements, and doesn’t compete, with the wild capture fisheries,” says O’Scannlain.

“The American waterfront communities have been battered by a decline in opportunities for processing, for shipping, for distributing, wild capture fisheries. We need to complement wild fisheries with additional supply because we need to meet increased demand, and so if we can do more domestic aquaculture, just offshore, we can supply these production facilities and these waterfront communities with a great supplly of seafood to process.

“Regulatory uncertainty is probably the largest barrier to increasing aquaculture development here in the United States. The ultimate benefit to increasing aquaculture development goes to the American consumer, because they’ll have a wider, more diverse supply of options of seafood products.”

MARA Act

Each of the three videos will be rolled out on SATS’ digital platforms, including X and LinkedIn, in the coming weeks. The roll-out will be supported with a targeted paid promotion and digital advertising campaign.

SATS said the launch comes as bipartisan momentum for legislation to advance American open ocean aquaculture grows in Congress. Introduced by Senators Roger Wicker (Republican, Mississippi) and Brian Schatz (Democrat, Hawaii) and Representatives Mike Ezell (Republican, Mississippi), Ed Case (Democrat, Hawaii), Kat Cammack (Republican, Florida), and Jimmy Panetta (Democrat, California), the bipartisan Marine Aquaculture Research for America (MARA) Act of 2025 (S.2586/H.R. 5746) would advance the development of commercial-scale open ocean aquaculture in US federal waters.

The bill has received backing from leading environmental groups, seafood leaders, chefs, and academics.