CEO Phil Cruver faced numerous challenges during the early years he was trying to get Catalina Sea Ranch (CSR) off the ground. The odds were stacked against it. For instance, the mussel farm was ready to market its first harvest in June 2017 but the lack of FDA-certified biotoxin testing labs in California prevented that harvest from reaching the market .
As the first offshore shellfish farm permitted in US federal waters, the 100-acre “ranch,” located about six miles off the coast of Huntington Beach, CA, had to traverse a new landscape. Offshore aquaculture, as an emerging sector, is fraught with uncertainty. There’s a myriad of regulatory challenges that accompany it and potential conflicts with other user groups such as fisheries or tourism, and anti-aquaculture activists…
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