The Project

Gulf Marine Institute of Technology (GMIT), as a 501 C-3 non-profit research institute is developing technology and commercial & humanitarian projects to establish low cost food production systems that may be transferable to other nations coastal zones to help supply part of the their large shortfall of edible protein. GMIT’s efforts harness aquaculture in a unique production program that tames fast-growing Gulf of Mexico finfish like “cobia” using a large decommissioned offshore oil platform complex as a research base for establishing sea-farming operations.

Worldwide Growing Need: Planning now for our future food supply security is one of the keys to man's continuing existence. Human action and exploitation of the coastal and marine resources have caused drastic reductions world wide in many preferred species of edible fish. A National Academy of Sciences report stated, “that the composition and abundance of both marine animals and plants have been reduced extensively enough to endanger the functioning of the entire marine ecosystem.”

Our nations dependence on land based protein supply from the cattle and poultry industry are subject to the vagaries of disease, drought and terrorism. Certainly diversity of our food supply in the USA could become an urgent priority in the event of any future natural or manmade cataclysmic event. Our nation is rich in marine water resources, which should be farmed as part of a strategic food supply plan like Japan and China! These governments have invested hundreds of millions in financial support to develop sea-farmed products and considers their seafood protein supply as a national survival priority for good health, nutrition and sustainability of its traditional natural seafood resources.

The United Nations Hunger Project recently reported estimates that every day 24,000 people die from hunger or hunger-related causes. GMIT will raise fast growing cobia and other species within its sea-farming development sites in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Cobia, for example, grows on average an inch a week as juveniles, and can weigh up to 20 pounds in a year. By domesticating cobia and other species, it will be possible to provide systems and fast-growing marine finfish species that could help supply a substantial amount of reasonably priced protein to help supplement the world’s deteriorating supply of one of its most important protein resources “seafood”

According to US Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez on February 13, 2006, “We need to create this industry now”.  Sea farming could become the next multi-billion dollar industry in the EEZ (in the Gulf of Mexico) to “create jobs and economic opportunity for coastal communities”.

The U.S. Department of Commerce's initiative is aimed toward re-establishing the United States as a net exporting nation for fisheries products, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs and generating billions of dollars of new business in the process. The United States has become dependent on imported fishery products, contributing as much as $8 billion to $9 billion yearly to our trade deficit, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service annual trade summary.

The economic potential of GMIT’s project addresses the desperate need for new economic development on the Gulf coast. Our coastal enterprise zones have been hit hard by declining fisheries, cheap foreign seafood imports, high fuel costs and catastrophic natural disasters. These economic impacts have been so far reaching that the US Congress has passed several bills that directly deal with relief and rebuilding of the GOM coast.

In the last two years, the northern coast of the GOM has been hit by three major hurricanes, Ivan in 2004 and Katrina and Rita in 2005. The devastation has been almost inconceivable in multiple communities along the GOM. Estimates have topped over 500,000 jobs lost from the aftermath of Katrina and Rita in 2005. The economic losses have been staggering with >$29 Billion lost in Charley and Ivan in 2004 and an estimated $320 Billion lost in Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005. Katrina has become the single largest economic disaster due to a natural disaster in US history. Katrina had such an effect on the GOM that DOC Secretary declared the Gulf from the Florida Keys to the Texas border a “fishery failure.” 

GMIT’s project could help revitalize the fisheries business with new methods and technology that are storm resistant, restore many of the related jobs lost and build a platform for creating a new coastal enterprise development zone similar to those successfully sponsored in Greece, Norway, Japan, China, and Chile for the benefit of American citizens needing jobs and the United States sea food markets

GMIT has completed, for the first time in U.S. history, the acquisition and permitting of sea-farming research and development sites consisting of 500 acres and the largest four-platform complex located in Texas state waters plus another smaller site in the federal waters, 9 miles south of the Florida/Alabama’s coast. The huge platform complex in Texas was previously used for oil and gas production and is owned by GMIT. The platforms in Texas are the first dedicated platforms for mariculture R &D in the history of the United States.

GMIT will work together with distinguished researchers from the University of Texas, Texas A&M and other project sponsors to convert this massive platform complex into the largest offshore mariculture production and research project in the U.S. Cage systems have been designed to serve as habitats for the various fish species that will be cultivated. The project will be using these platforms to provide a safe, stable, and centralized 24-hour management and crew station 10 miles offshore in the Gulf to provide sufficient depth and water quality. Offshore platforms naturally attract many fish and become artificial reefs and are often found to be ideal for sea farming research. Of the approximately 4,000 oil and gas platforms located in the Gulf, nearly 2,000 will be dismantled in the next few years, raising tremendous growth opportunities for additional future development farm sites by the project developers and sponsors in collaboration with the offshore oil &gas production industry.