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August 10, 2023

The Freshwater Institute’s efforts with D.C. Central Kitchen were recently highlighted in the Washington Post.

March 27, 2023

Freshwater Institute announced today its selection for the 2023 NewTechAqua Award Challenge. Freshwater Institute’s real-time fish mortality detection system was one of five entries chosen from 47 proposals for the Award Challenge — and it is the only winner from the United States.

July 12, 2022

Brian Vinci, IntraFish — Let’s be clear, the land-based salmon farming dream is not a disaster in Maine, or anywhere else for that matter. We are in the midst of the development and growth of the land-based salmon farming industry. Growth by fits and starts is to be expected, not criticized.

February 9, 2022

The Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute and Mountaineer Food Bank teamed up to provide over 4,000 meals of locally-raised salmon fillets to West Virginians in need.

December 16, 2021

Noregs Fiskerihøgskule ved UiT Noregs arktiske universitet har fått 28 millionar frå Forskingsrådet til prosjektet CandRAS. No skal kompetansen på landbasert fiskeoppdrett hevast i heile landsdelen.

September 28, 2021

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.V. — Fueled by increased global demand for salmon and the opportunity to help salmon farmers accelerate development to meet this demand, The Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute, an internationally-renowned research and development program focused on recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), and Cargill, a global leader in solutions for animal feeds, announced a multi-year agreement to develop, evaluate and enhance feeds for the growing land-based aquaculture industry.

May 27, 2021

Brian Vinci, IntraFish — The promise of RAS has always been the same: year-round, local production of consistent, high quality seafood that minimized environmental impact. The fact that some NGOs found solutions in land-based RAS to challenges they were addressing does not mean they magically put it on a fast-track to adoption.

January 5, 2021

Brian Vinci, IntraFish — Brian Vinci is director of The Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute, one of the world’s leading research institutions on recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) and land-based salmon farming in particular.

October 9, 2020

Mari-Len De Guzman, Hatchery International — Thirty-four-year-old Curtis Crouse is the assistant aquaculture production manager at The Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Learn more about Curtis, his role as a hands-on RAS expert, and why he’s a Top 10 Under 40.

January 5, 2020

Amy Nordstrom, IEEE Spectrum, January 5, 2020–Inside a row of nondescript buildings in the small town of Albany, in northeast Indiana—approximately 1,000 kilometers from the nearest coast—Atlantic salmon are sloshing around in fiberglass tanks.

Only in the past five years has it become possible to raise thousands of healthy fish so far from the shoreline without contaminating millions of gallons of fresh water. A technology called recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) now allows indoor aquaculture farms to recycle up to 99 percent of the water they use. And the newest generation of these systems will help one biotech company bring its unusual fish to U.S. customers for the first time this year.

October 31, 2018

Media Statement by Brian Vinci, Director, Freshwater Institute

February 5, 2018

Jason Huffman, Undercurrent News, February 5, 2018– Large-track construction vehicles roll over white sand on 80 acres of property that until recently was used to grow tomatoes. Everything has been progressing here in a way that should allow Atlantic Sapphire to open what would be the US’ first operational, large-scale commercial salmon farm and deliver an initial harvest of 800 metric tons by mid-2020 as planned, Johan Andreassen, the founder and CEO, assured a small group of investors during a tour late last month.

The Freshwater Institute, a research organization sponsored by the Conservation Fund, has been raising salmon on land in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, for the past seven years as part of an effort to advance the practice, frequently selling its small 20,000 to 40,000 lb annual harvest to a Maryland dealer.

January 10, 2018

Sharon Durham, AgResearch Magazine – Although the global aquaculture industry produced 73.8 million tons of fish and shellfish, with an estimated first-sale value of $160.2 billion in 2014, the United States is still the leading global importer of fish and fishery products.

ARS also provides funding to The Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute (TCFFI), in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, to develop these kinds of technologies. Recirculating water systems can help increase the amount of fish available to markets while solving some of the problems inherent in open-water fish farms.

November 15, 2017

Gloria Dickie, Oceans Deeply, 15 November 2017 – The recent escape of 160,000 Atlantic salmon raised in Pacific Ocean pens and environmental concerns about the impact of fish farms on wild populations have prompted a new look at inland aquaculture.summ

“The biggest challenge is the capital that’s required to produce salmon on land and compete in the marketplace,” said Steve Summerfelt, director of aquaculture systems research at the Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute, which specializes in the design of aquaculture systems to promote water conservation. “When you start accounting for paying back capital, it makes it a more challenging business proposition. Right now, entrepreneurs are trying to prove it’s economically viable. There are only a few pioneers trying to be first, and a lot wanting to be second.”

November 14, 2017

Victoria Ritter, Gears of Biz, 14 November 2017 – Most of the studies investigating the use of ozone for enhancing the quality of water in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) reiterate the effectiveness of ozone in creating an ideal water environment.

The ability of ozone to improve the water quality and to control various other water parameters in municipal and aquaculture tanks has been established. According to a study conducted at the Freshwater Institute, rainbow trout (Figure 1) exhibited more growth in an ozonized low exchange RAS than in a non-ozonized system. The study focussed on investigating the ability of ozone to create a favorable water environment for salmonids.

August 31, 2017

Jordan Simonson, Jackson County Chronicle, 31 August 2017 – The largest Atlantic salmon farm in the country, Superior Fresh, opened its doors to Gov. Scott Walker Thursday in the small town of Northfield in Jackson County, providing a look into the future of harvesting fish and producing vegetables.

With the vision Superior Fresh has shown in the project, Steven Summerfelt, Ph.D., the director of aquaculture systems research for the Freshwater Institute, said it is the wave of the future.

“Superior Fresh is showing us what the future of seafood and agriculture is looking like at a commercial scale. Just the tour today, if a picture is a 1,000 words, this was a novel, and this novel isn’t science fiction. This is the future of environmentally-controlled agriculture,” Summerfelt said.

August 31, 2017

Elizabeth Dohms, Leader-Telegram, 31 August 2017 – Atlantic salmon that once required a 4,000-plus-mile journey to the plates of hungry Midwesterners will feed those a little closer to their home in western Wisconsin.

“If a picture is a thousand words, this is a novel, and this isn’t science fiction,” said Steven Summerfelt, one of the facility’s engineers and the director of aquaculture systems research at Freshwater Institute based in West Virginia. “This is the future of environmental-controlled agriculture.”

August 26, 2017

Castanet, 26 August 2017 – Critics of open-net fish farms say the escape of Atlantic salmon from a Washington state pen that held 305,000 fish should spur Canada to support a transition to land-based aquaculture because it’s already leading the world with the most facilities using that method.

The First Nation, which received part of its funding from Tides Canada on the basis that it provide open access to its knowledge, has enabled Kuterra to become an industry leader, says Steve Summerfelt of the Conservation Fund Freshwater Institute in Shepherdstown, W. Va.

August 26, 2017

Camille Bains, The Canadian Press, 26 August 2017 – Critics of open-net fish farms say the escape of Atlantic salmon from a Washington state pen that held 305,000 fish should spur Canada to support a transition to land-based aquaculture because it’s already leading the world with the most facilities using that method.

Steve Summerfelt of the Conservation Fund Freshwater Institute in Shepherdstown, W. Va., said three of the world’s 13 land-based salmon facilities are in Canada, while China has the largest production capacity with its two operations, followed by Denmark.

August 25, 2017

Financial Post, 25 August 2017 – Critics of open-net fish farms say the escape of 305,000 Atlantic salmon in Washington state should spur Canada to support a transition to land-based aquaculture.

Steve Summerfelt of the Conservation Fund Freshwater Institute in Shepherdstown, W. Va., says compared with the United States, Europe and China, Canada has the most companies using closed-containment pens to harvest salmon.

August 16, 2017

Neil Ramsden, Undercurrent News, 16 August 2017 – Norwegian research body Nofima is running various research projects into the various finer points of recirculation aquaculture system (RAS) technology, in the belief that land-based systems will play a part in the industry in future.

Steven Summerfelt – of the Freshwater Institute in the US, and CtrlAqua – added that the US was likely to see a rise in RAS fish production, with great interest in raising fish near population centers.

May 21, 2017

Tom Walker, Aquaculture North America, 15 May 2017 – The first commercial scale indoor Atlantic salmon RAS facility in the US is up and running in Northfield, Wisconsin.

“Our initial cohort of year-old Atlantics are moving through the system,” says Superior Fresh COO Brandon Gottsacker. “We expect to harvest them in the second quarter of 2018 at a target weight of 4-5 kilograms.”

March 28, 2017

Carlee Lammers, Charleston Gazette-Mail, 28 March 2017 – A long, gravel driveway twists past a quaint farmhouse and leads to a more nondescript building just off the winding back roads of this Jefferson County city.

While it might not look like much from the outside, inside the building sits a research lab — the heart of Freshwater Institute, an internationally recognized program of the Conservation Fund.

March 13, 2017

Ben Paynter, Fast Company, 13 March 2017 – State wildlife biologists continue seeking ways to reduce elk-human conflicts in the mountains, including installing electric fences on farms and setting aside more public land for the giant grazers.

February 28, 2017

Rob Fletcher, Fish Farming Expert, 28 February 2017 – Up to 200,000 tonnes of market-sized salmonids will be grown in land-based systems within the next decade. So believes Steve Summerfelt, Director of Aquaculture Systems Research at the Freshwater Institute in West Virginia.

October 24, 2016

The Dr. Oz Show, 24 October 2016 – Larry Olmsted debunks the myth that farmed salmon is bad to for you. Plus, he travels to West Virginia to investigate the Freshwater Institute and farmed salmon practices such as tank-based aquaculture.

October 18, 2016

Amon Rappaport, GreenBiz, 18 October 2016 – As I set out this summer for a month traveling with my family through Africa, the Middle East and the United States for business and vacation, I wondered: Where would I find the best examples of sustainability and social impact — and lessons to bring home for businesses, brands and those of us working for a better world?

Let’s face it: Africa and the Middle East don’t usually conjure up images of “sustainability,” but quite the opposite.

October 12, 2016

National Geographic Ocean Views, 12 October 2016 – October is National Seafood Month. What better time to examine the critical role seafood plays in our global food system? Given that over 90 percent of U.S. seafood is currently imported, and that twice the current supply will be needed by 2050, there is an urgent need for new ways to produce high-quality, local fish without putting more pressure on our oceans.

September 27, 2016

Larry Olmstead, Serious Eats, 27 September 2016 – A few weeks ago, the nonprofit conservation group Oceana released the latest in a long series of seafood fraud studies. The big reveal? Roughly 20% of seafood worldwide is mislabeled, allowing cheaper species to masquerade as more expensive ones with astonishing regularity.

August 10, 2016

Sarah Tincher, The State Journal, 10 August 2016 – Most people wouldn’t think coal mining and fish farming could go hand-in-hand, but aquaculture specialists around the state are proving these industries are, in some cases, a perfect match.

June 1, 2016

Aerin Curtis, Feed Navigator.com, 1 June 2016 – Aquacutlure production systems have little to fear from fishmeal-free diets even as fish gut bacteria reacts to the change, say researchers.

A group of US researchers examined what it can mean to replace fishmeal in farm-raised salmon diets for the gut health and microbiome of the fish and the functioning of the bio-filters in a recirculation aquaculture system (RAS).

May 14, 2016

Chuck Rupnow, Leader-Telegram, 14 May 2016 – Sandy Burton doesn’t know what aquaponics means. She does know the impressively massive construction effort just off Interstate 94 in the Jackson County town of Northfield involves fish and plants.

“I just want to know what they are doing,” Burton, of Osseo, said Friday from outside a convenience store in Northfield, about 10 miles southeast of Osseo. “The one building is huge, and I think they’re growing fish.”

April 23, 2016

Steven Labadie, Outdoor Journal Radio, 6 May 2016 – Steve Summerfelt, the Freshwater Institute’s director of Aquaculture Systems Research talks with Host Angelo Viola about the future of sustainable aquaculture and the Institute’s partnership with Wegmans to provide locally-raised Atlantic salmon to the D.C. metro area.

April 5, 2016

Paige Jones, The Frederick News-Post, 5 April 2016 – Frederick consumers searching for locally-grown, sustainable salmon no longer have to scour grocery stores or farmers’ markets. For the next few weeks, this salmon will be sold at nearby Wegmans stores. The Freshwater Institute, which is dedicated to sustainable water use and aquaculture through science and technology under the national nonprofit The Conservation Fund, partnered with Wegmans Food Markets this year to make the salmon it grew locally and sustainably available to consumers in the area.

August 24, 2015

David McAninch, Food Fanatics, Fall 2015 – Within a decade, the majority of seafood will come not from open waters but from fish farms. And not just the kind most diners think. Some of the best-tasting and most sustainably farmed seafood in the world is currently raised on land.

August 13, 2015

RP Siegel, Triple Pundit, 13 August 2015 – Local food is all the rage these days. People love to buy local. If you put up a sign over a bin of produce, eggs or dairy products, saying they are locally grown, and the price isn’t too bad, that bin will sell out fast. Local meat is popular too, as is seafood, provided you live near the ocean.

December 12, 2014

Margery A. Beck, Associated Press, ap.org 13 December 2014 — The latest of five generations who have worked the same ground in northeastern Nebraska, 52-year-old Scott Garwood, isn’t growing corn or cattle – it’s fish. Specifically, thousands of an Australian freshwater species called barramundi – often dubbed Asian sea bass because of its similar sweet, white flaky flesh – in large tanks inside a warehouse.

November 29, 2014

Nicholas Geisler, OSMO Systems blog, Osmobot.com/blog 30 November 2014 — As part of our deep love for all things aquaculture, we’re profiling the companies and people making a difference in the future of farming. Today we’re talking about The Freshwater Institute, the Seafood Watch-approved indoor salmon farm that is changing the way we think about raising fish.

November 17, 2014

Josh Schonwald, TIME Magazine, Time.com 18 November 2014 — When you hear the term “sustainable seafood,” you might envision a fisherman pulling catch from a pristine sea. But a few weeks ago, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, arguably the world’s most influential arbiter of seafood sustainability, gave its highest stamp of approval to three companies that are about as far away from that fishing idyll as possible.

August 21, 2014

Chelsea DeMello, The Journal, HampshireReview.com 22 August 2014 — SHEPHERDSTOWN- Sunday Morning began like a trip to another world, as dozens of scientific representatives geared up safely in blue and white space uniforms to tour the Freshwater Institute to see the facility’s progress on food production sustainability.

July 16, 2014

James Wright, Senior Editor, SeafoodSource.com 17 July 2014 — Salamone of Wegmans hasn’t given up on the idea of fish farms positioned in close proximity to key markets. The 68-year-old veteran said he wishes he were 30 years younger so he could see the industry evolve to a point that may seem like a fantasy today. “Ten years from now a company like Wegmans could raise its own fish on land somewhere,” he said. “That is the future for land-based aquaculture.”

May 13, 2014

Whitney Pipkin, Bay Journal, BayJournal.com 14 May 2014 — Salmon skins glisten in the waters below as three men wait, nets in hand, for the right catch to swim near the surface. The fish, grouped into one corner of an expansive pool, flop against its surface as the nets swoop in, splashing water that’s conspicuously salt-free onto the metal platform. This, of course, isn’t the wild, where 2-year-old Atlantic salmon like this rarely venture south of the Connecticut River and have seldom been spotted in the Chesapeake Bay. This is The Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute, located nearly 80 miles inland in Shepherdstown, WV.

April 17, 2014

Whitney Pipkin, The Washington Post, WashingtonPost.com, 18 April 2014 — Still have farmed salmon crossed off your short list of eco-friendly fish? A local version that’s available for a limited time in the Washington area could temporarily rewrite your rules. Most farmed salmon are raised in open nets or pens in the ocean, where their waste and potential to introduce parasites, diseases or non-native fish to the wild present serious environmental concerns. The Freshwater Institute, a program of the Arlington-based Conservation Fund, has been trying another way.

March 17, 2014

John Randolph, FlyFisherman.com 18 March 2014 – Can wild Atlantic and Pacific salmon be saved from extinction if floating open-net-pen fish farms are replaced by chemical- and disease-free, closed-cycle farms on land? The idea sounds too good to be true to an editor/writer who for more than 30 years has been following the first-promising and highly promoted birth of industrial floating fish farms from Norway, to Scotland, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, the Canadian Maritimes, British Columbia, and Chile. It has been a failed promise. The new hope is land-based, closed-containment systems for fish production.

February 28, 2014

Summerfelt and Christianson, World Aquaculture Magazine, March 2014 – The Aquaculture Innovation Workshop #5 – An International Summit on Fish Farming in Land-Based Closed-Containment Systems was hosted by The Conservation Fund Freshwater Institute, Tides Canada (TC), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF) and the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF) at the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC) in Shepherdstown, WV, 4-6 September 2013. This international summit provided an opportunity for aquaculture producers, scientists, engineers, aquaculture industry suppliers, regulators and investors to communicate progress on the technical, biological and economic feasibility of culturing fish – particularly salmon – to food-size in land-based closed-containment systems.

26, 2014February

Christine Pratt, The Wenatchee World, 27 February 2014 — BAKER FLATS – Healthier ﬁsh, 70 percent less fresh water use, easier care and maintenance, cleaner water. At a time when ﬁsheries biologists are tasked with improving efficiency and reducing the cost of raising and releasing young salmon, an experiment undertaken by the Chelan County PUD in 2008 is turning heads around the region.

January 5, 2014

Evelyn Boychuk, CBC.ca CBCNews, January 6, 2014 – “It’s no longer possible to say that recirculation aquaculture systems … are not possible for Atlantic salmon, because we’re living proof that is [not] the case,” says Jackie Hildering, community liaison for the Namgis closed-containment project.

December 14, 2013

Jonathan Carr, Atlantic Salmon Journal Winter 2013 — Forty years ago, in 1973, a small group of scientists gathered at the College of Cape Breton in Sydney Nova Scotia, to hear a presentation about salmon aquaculture in Norway. The idea of net pen aquaculture in Atlantic Canada garnered much skepticism at that time. Read Jon Carr’s assessment of how we got here and where we are going in Atlantic salmon aquaculture.

December 1, 2013

HeraldMailMedia.com, December 2, 2013. — Tucked away off the back roads of Shepherdstown is a typical-looking farmhouse. A gravel drive winds behind it, leading to a nondescript building, a research lab that is the heart of the Freshwater Institute, an internationally recognized program of The Conservation Fund. Nature is teeming in that lab, the centerpiece of which is a tank filled with 40,000 gallons of water and 5,000 Atlantic salmon, each weighing about 4 to 6 pounds. That tank and the fish within it feed the research into sustainable aquaculture conducted by the staff, including Senior Research Associate John W. Davidson III.

August 31, 2013

Rosemary Westwood, Maclean’s September 1, 2013 — The idea of Prairie seafood may seem outlandish, but with soaring demand running headlong into environmental concerns over fish farms, some believe the future of the fisheries industry rests on dry land. At the Cheslakees Indian Reserve near Port McNeill on Vancouver Island, environmental groups and the ’Namgis First Nation recently opened North America’s first commercial-scale Atlantic salmon farm based entirely on land.

April 3, 2013

Elisabeth Fischer Intrafish.com April 4, 2013 — The views on land-based salmon farming are ambivalent, but the call for a move onshore seems to be growing louder every day. Up to a dozen new farms are currently in various planning or construction stages all around the world, in addition to the four that have already been stocked with smolts. And the industry interest is “tremendous” and growing, Steven Summerfelt, director, aquaculture systems research at the Conservation Fund Freshwater Institute, one of the major research institutes into on-land recirculation systems for salmon, told Intrafish.

February 3, 2013

CBC.ca Information Morning St. John February 4, 2013 — The Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute in West Virginia has been experimenting with large-scale, on land salmon farming. The private non-profit is ready to release a report on its findings soon. Steven Summerfelt is the Institute’s director of Aquaculture Systems Research. Dr. Steven Summerfelt provides an update on the realities and the promising future of land-based closed containment salmon aquaculture with CBC’s Hance Colburne on the Information Morning St. John show. Highlights include a response to concerns about production costs compared to conventional net-pen ocean farming and illustration of the need for consumers to consider the full value of environmentally responsible sources when making purchase decisions.