The funding, awarded to project creator SeaExpert, a private enterprise fisheries consultancy formed four years ago, follows an initial government grant of around €40,000 ($59,000), given in December 2007 to aid the first phase of the offshore farming scheme.
The new award, which was confirmed Thursday after a final presentation by SeaExpert, will finance the concluding experimental stage of the project: a 15-month trial of a second sea cage prototype and the designation of new production areas.
"It’s a totally exclusive, endemic product which only occurs in the Azores," SeaExpert CEO Henrique Ramos told Intrafish.
