The US Army Corps of Engineers New England District (USACE) issued a public notice for a permit application filed by Blue Water Fisheries to conduct work in the Piscataqua River at the Commercial Fish Pier located at 1 Pierce Island Road, Portsmouth, New Hampshire and two open water sites within the Atlantic Ocean. This notice and other USACE public notices can be viewed on the Portal’s Army Corps Public Notices page by clicking on the Current Issues menu at the top of the page.
The boundaries of the two open water sites are now available to view in the Data Explorer by navigating to the Aquaculture category and selecting “Proposed Blue Water Fisheries Open Water Sites”. As in the public notice, the sites are labeled Sites 2 and 3 in the map.
Screenshot of interactive Data Explorer map. Green rectangles indicate the proposed Blue Water Fisheries Sites 2 and 3 in federal waters offshore of Newburyport, Massachusetts.
The work involves to install, operate and maintain 40 submersible fish pens in two mooring grids (20 pens per grid). Each mooring grid will occupy a 250-acre section of open water. The structures will comprise a plurality of embedment anchors, associated hardware, tension lines and buoys. Each cage will be submerged in no less than 15 meters of water most of the time.
The USACE is soliciting comments from the public; Federal, state, and local agencies and officials; Indian Tribes; and other interested parties in order to consider and evaluate the impacts of this proposed activity. View the public notice for more information about how to submit comments. Comments should be received in writing by July 8, 2021.
