Environmental organizations considering next steps, including action in federal court in Washington, D.C.
On May 15, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a modified permit to a Hawaii-based company that will allow it to install an aquaculture facility — or “fish farm” — about 40 miles off the Sarasota County coastline, The Sarasota News Leader has learned.
The location, an EPA fact sheet says, is approximately 27° 7.34185’N, 83° 12.02291’W.
In a May 15, 2025 memorandum, EPA environmental engineer Kip Tyler, who is on the agency’s Region 4 staff, in Atlanta, summed up the decision: “All potential water quality risks associated with the modified permit are less when compared to the 2022 permit [issued to Ocean Era] due to the change in fish species, decreased fish production amount, lower total feed, and reduced phosphorus and nitrogen feed contents.”
As shown in a table included in the document, he added, “the total load for nitrogen, phosphorus, and total ammonia nitrogen have decreased by 28%, 40%, 23%, respectively.”
Further, Tyler wrote, “EPA does not anticipate that project’s discharge will contribute to HABs [harmful algal blooms] due to the offshore location and scale of the facility; however, any HAB effects from the project are mitigated by the reduced scale of pollutants compared to pollutants that were already evaluated in the 2022 permit.”
Ocean Era submitted a request to the EPA on May 10, 2023, asking that the agency allow it to modify the original permit for what the company has christened its Velella Epsilon project. Ocean Era cited changes in its plans that had become necessary for a variety of reasons, as the News Leader has reported.
The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit is necessary for the company to establish the facility in the Gulf, as a result of requirements in the U.S. Clean Water Act, the EPA has explained.
The EPA does acknowledge that two petitions for legal review of the permitting process were filed in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; one, for the Second Circuit; the other, for the Washington, D.C., Circuit. Those petitions, which were consolidated in the D.C. Circuit, remain pending, the agency adds.
In a joint motion filed on May 27, the parties asked the court “to keep these consolidated cases in abeyance for another 45 days, with motions to govern due by July 11, 2025.”
The parties pointed out that they, “and others, may seek review of the modified permit by EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board,” adding that that such action had to be pursued no later than 30 days after their receipt of notice of the permit’s issuance.
The continued abeyance, they agreed, would enable them and others to decide on how best to proceed at this point.
A May 23 news release from Suncoast Waterkeeper, which is based in Sarasota, decried the EPA’s May 15 decision.
“During the public comment period [on the proposed permit modification], organizations including Suncoast Waterkeeper, Food & Water Watch, Sierra Club Florida, Center for Food Safety, Recirculating Farms, and others submitted extensive comments raising serious concerns about the farm’s environmental impacts,” the release said.
“The project threatens to worsen nutrient pollution in an area already vulnerable to harmful algal blooms like red tide, which have devastated the Suncoast’s ecosystems and economy,” the news release continued. “While the modified permit reduces the number of fish and projected nutrient discharge, advocates warn that even small-scale operations can have substantial negative impacts — especially in sensitive areas,” the release added.
Cris Costello, a Nokomis resident who is the senior organizing manager of Sierra Club Florida, said in the release, “I am acutely aware of how nearly every ordinary rainy-season flow of land-based nutrient pollution into the gulf fuels the Red Tide that brings dead fish strewn (and the concomitant stench) across our beaches that destroys our quality of life and property values, and runs tourists and their money away. What were they thinking when they decided to plague us with a new source of year-round pollution that is placed directly in the water? It is as if they’ve decided to completely destroy our local economy!”
Marianne Cufone, executive director and counsel for Recirculating Farms, added in the release, “It’s so disappointing to see the Environmental Protection Agency approve a permit for a widely opposed offshore finfish aquaculture project in U.S. waters. The Gulf states are already dealing with spinning and dying smalltooth sawfish and rays, massive coral die off, giant mats of rotting sargassum, algal blooms, and a dead zone. We simply cannot handle more pollution in our ocean waters.”
Attorney Martha Collins, who lives in the Tampa Bay region and who, earlier this year became executive director of Healthy Gulf, which is based in New Orleans, pointed out in the release, “Industrial aquaculture operations like this introduce pollution, threaten native fish populations with disease and genetic disruption, and put Gulf Coast communities that rely on clean water and healthy fisheries at risk. This project is a gateway for the expansion of factory fish farms in our open waters.”
EPA receives few formal comments during permit modification process
On May 15, the EPA also released a document titled Response to Significant Concerns about the Ocean Era proposal. In that report, the agency said that it received fewer than 200 “written comments from interested individuals and national, regional, and local non-governmental organizations” in regard to the plans for the modified permit.
Among the latter, it pointed out in a footnote, were the Siesta Key Association (SKA), which represents residents on the barrier island, and the Siesta Key Condominium Council, whose members represent 100 associations, with a total of about 7,000 households.
The “non-governmental organizations” list also includes Suncoast Waterkeeper, Don’t Cage Our Oceans, Healthy Gulf, Sierra Club Florida, Center for Food Safety and the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation.
That document does explain that when a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit is modified, “only the conditions that are modified are reopened for public comment … All other aspects of the currently effective permit remain in effect for the duration of the unmodified permit.”
The agency added that it received “many comments that relate to the 2022 permit [it issued Ocean Era for the Velella Epsilon project] but do not relate to the revised conditions in the draft modified permit.”
The original permit that the EPA issued to Ocean Era involved Almaco jack fingerlings, which would have been placed in a net pen attached to a swivel point mooring system made of copper, EPA documents point out. The modified permit allows the company to raise red drum in a stationary cage made of monofilament that would be attached to a grid mooring system.
A May 15 EPA fact sheet points out that the “cage can be adjusted to suit wave and current conditions. As a result, the system can operate floating on the ocean surface or submerged within the water column of the ocean. When a storm approaches the area, the cage can be submerged.”
With both proposals, Ocean Era said that 20,000 fish fingerlings would be placed in the facility for one production cycle, which would last about 12 months. The company’s anticipation is that approximately 17,000 fish would be harvested, “assuming an 85% survival rate,” the EPA fact sheet notes.
Because red drum grow more slowly than Almaco jack, the EPA points out in its documents, the maximum total fish weight at time of harvesting would be 55,000 pounds, instead of 88,000 pounds, as expected when the species was to be Almaco jack.
“When accounting for the 15% mortality rate,” one EPA document explains, “the red drum’s smaller harvestable size equates to … 46,750 [pounds],” which is approximately 63% of the 74,800 pounds anticipated for the Almaco jack at harvest time.
The EPA does note that the daily feed rate for both species of fish is about the same.
Further, an EPA document says, “Ocean Era is not proposing any changes to the drugs or therapeutants used during fish production.” Moreover, it notes, “Ocean Era reports that red drum are better suited to a stationary net pen and less likely to need therapeutants to control pathogens due to being naturally more tolerant to skin flukes.”
The EPA fact sheet about the plans also explains that the effluent — or “outfall” — from the net pen would be “immediately downstream of the midpoint of the cage. The proposed facility would “be placed within an area that contains unconsolidated sediments” that are 3 to 10 feet deep. Ocean Era plans to select the location, the fact sheet adds, “based on a diver-assisted assessment of the sea floor when the cage and mooring system are deployed.” The proposed action area has a radius of 3,281 feet, “measured from the center of the stationary cage,” the fact sheet points out.
In his 109-page, May 15 memorandum, environmental engineer Tyler of the EPA explained that, on Sept. 25, 2024, the agency “requested guidance from the NMFS [National Marine Fisheries Service] about whether a supplemental EFH [Essential Fish Habitat] consultation is necessary” for issuance of the modified permit.” The same day, the memo continued, “NMFS determined that the proposed revisions to the facility [planned by Ocean Era] would only have minimal effects on marine fishery resources, no EFH conservation recommendations were necessary, and that supplemental EFH consultation is not necessary.”
Further, on Feb. 18, Tyler continued, the NMFS issued a letter stating that it was unlikely that the modified Ocean Era proposal would adversely affect any species on the Endangered Species Act list or “designated critical habitat.”