A Dutch aquaculture firm that plans to build a $110 million land-based fish farm in Jonesport has reached an agreement with the University of Maine to lease space at the school’s aquaculture incubator to breed and hatch fish that the company then will grow to market size.
Kingfish Zeeland has an option to acquire a 94-acre oceanfront parcel of land overlooking Chandler Bay on Route 187, a few miles east of Jonesport’s main village. If it gets the necessary regulatory approvals, it plans to build a facility on site within the next couple of years that would produce around 13 million pounds of yellowtail fish a year for the North American seafood market, with possible expansion sometime later.
The firm, which already has a land-based yellowtail farm in the Netherlands, has signed a lease with UMaine’s Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research in Franklin, roughly 50 miles away from the planned development site, to develop the broodstock — mature members of a species used for breeding — for the fish farm.
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