Advancing Regenerative Aquaculture to Help Build the Future of a New Industry

As the U.S. works to advance open ocean aquaculture, innovation is critical to building a modern, sustainable American aquaculture industry. That means developing new technologies while also connecting science, workforce development, entrepreneurship, and practical support to the producers and businesses who seek to utilize those innovations to grow more sustainable seafood for American families.

A new regenerative aquaculture innovation hub, the Center for Applied Aquaculture Innovation (CAAI), is putting that approach into practice. The Center demonstrates how the latest regenerative aquaculture techniques—paired with pragmatic approaches to entrepreneurship and adaptation to a changing climate—can help nurture modern business success and revitalize the ocean, even for small producers. Regenerative aquaculture focuses on the generation of net environmental benefits such as mitigating pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate pressures.

CAAI, a part of the iAlumbra collective, is using Baja California Sur, where they are based, as a living laboratory. The Center tests and proves how regenerative aquaculture models, especially in warm water, can be adapted and scaled to coastal communities worldwide.

Ernesto Rodríguez Leal, Executive Director of CAAI, tells a story about one of the Center's entrepreneurship programs, which helped eight family oyster farms in Bahía Magdalena build their businesses amid rising water temperatures. With this year's harvest at risk of being lost to the warming water, the hands-on program focused on helping get these farmers into festivals and events where they could sell what they'd harvested.

"Through our incubation programming, we provide local producers with technical training to optimize farm productivity, business mentoring, and support in coordinating joint logistics and purchasing," explains Rodríguez Leal. "That technical and operational foundation directly translates to commercial impact, like a recent festival in nearby Todos Santos, where we supported local oyster farmers in selling 3,000 oysters in a single day. For a producer, that is a significant milestone for a weekend."

This kind of hands-on training shows how regenerative aquaculture is, as Rodríguez Leal puts it, not only a technique for producing food and protein, but also a way to strengthen coastal communities socially and economically.

"This is just the beginning for us," Rodríguez Leal says. "We hope to open this program to other farmers and even to families that aspire to become a producer, so we can transfer the know-how, the procedures, the technology, and the seeds they need to get started and become farmers as well."

The Center is collaborating closely with Innovasea, a global company with a regional hub in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Stronger America Through Seafood (SATS), on the design of the Center's laboratory and facilities. The goal is for CAAI to have "a world-class laboratory and facilities," Rodríguez Leal says, and, in the future, to give more companies the opportunity to benefit from the technological innovations available through Innovasea.

"The future of aquaculture depends on making innovation accessible and practical for producers," says Marc Turano, General Manager of Aquaculture Systems at Innovasea. "We are proud to support CAAI's vision of building a world-class center for advancing warm water aquaculture. Through it, producers can gain the knowledge, technologies, and practical expertise needed to strengthen regional economies, and support long-term food security."

CAAI is organized around four main pillars that support healthier oceans: applied research and development (R&D), workforce development, entrepreneurship and consulting. Through applied R&D, CAAI focuses on solving real-world aquaculture challenges. Through workforce development, the Center aims to train and inspire the next generation of aquaculture professionals. Through entrepreneurship, CAAI supports startups and producers as they bring ideas to market and scale their work. And through consulting, they share knowledge and capabilities developed across its broader ecosystem and help build new business models for aquaculture.

CAAI's work is science-based and rigorous, Rodríguez Leal says, and the Center puts a lot of meaning behind the word "applied" in its applied research and development.

"We want to understand the technology and the developments, make them available and apply them in the operations and farms where they are needed the most," Rodríguez Leal says. He explains that the Center's goal is to connect that technology and know-how directly to the problems producers are facing.

While today the Center's pilot entrepreneurship program is helping local oyster farmers in Mexico, CAAI expects to open the program to more farms, including interested farmers in the U.S. As the U.S. open ocean aquaculture industry grows, lessons and innovations emerging from programs like CAAI can help inform the technologies, workforce and business models needed to build a thriving American industry.

SATSAugust 31, 2026