ABOVE THE SAN PEDRO SHELF — The Pacific Ocean is mountain-spring clear here six miles off the coast of Huntington Beach, Calif., where Phil Cruver has been ranching for a few months now.
Dangling between buoys that rise on the occasional swell are sweeps of lines, some strung horizontally, others plunging vertically toward the sea plateau’s floor 150 feet below. The depth drops into oblivion about a mile to the west, and what rises are nutrients that make this prime farming territory. The proof is on the lines — the thick coils of mussel, Cruver’s livestock and his bet that deep-ocean ranching is the future of the world’s food supply.
This 100-acre patch of Pacific is the Catalina Sea Ranch, the first commercially viable aquaculture operation in federal waters. The first mussel harvest was this summer, and it is expanding to a planned 30 times its current size…