by Angela Mitchell
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www.mote.org • Mote Marine Laboratory
As the gap widens between seafood supply and demand, Mote is poised to play a pivotal role in expanding U.S. aquaculture production.
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r. Kevan Main can’t help but smile when she talks about the recent positive buzz in Washington D.C. about aquaculture. As the director of Mote’s Center for Aquaculture Research and Development, she’s been touting the benefits of aquaculture for years. “I’ll go to D.C. and talk about how important it is, but to have the Secretary of Commerce talking about how important it is — that is exciting,” she says. She’s referring to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) aquaculture summit in June, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez promoted new federal offshore aquaculture legislation and stressed the importance of getting the U.S. on level footing with the rest of the world on aquaculture production. Two months earlier, the National Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2007 was introduced into Congress to create a regulatory framework for safe and sustainable aquaculture in U.S. federal waters. For the first time, the law will enable offshore aquaculture production: growing fish for food in large cages or nets miles offshore in federal waters. With buy-in from NOAA all the way up to the President, the legislation shows promising signs of being passed. “It’s very exciting to me because there has been so much criticism of aquaculture — up until this year it has been nothing but negative, negative, negative,” says Main. “And now there’s a lot of interest in Washington D.C., about making aquaculture a priority and getting our industry up and moving.” © Lawson Mitchell / Mote Marine Laboratory
Siberian sturgeon at Mote Aquaculture Park.
Many, like Main, would say it’s about time, as fisheries are being depleted at unprecedented rates, and many types of fish here and abroad are depleted and can no longer be
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fished. Meanwhile, the U.S. demand for seafood is rising like never before. The result has been increasing seafood prices, the nation importing 70 percent of the fish consumed and an $8 billion seafood trade deficit that’s second only to oil. Moreover, the U.S. is missing the boat economically: Aquaculture production here accounts for only about 1.5 percent of a $70
is safe and environmentally friendly. That’s what Main and her staff have been working on. Mote Aquaculture Park Mote Aquaculture Park is the 200-acre home of Mote’s research activities focused on raising fish for food and for restocking depleted wild
that are big enough to reside in those offshore structures. The support for that has to be land-based marine facilities that are going to hatch and grow these fish through the larval and juvenile phases until they’re big enough to stock offshore. And it will be necessary to have many of these inland locations up and down the coasts in the U.S. to support these offshore growing operations.”
A study published in the journal Science suggests that the stocks of commercially harvested wild fish will collapse by 2048. “The time to create new sources for seafood to meet a growing demand is now,” says Mote President, Dr. Kumar Mahadevan. “We don’t want to wait until it’s too late.”
billion global industry. “The reality is that aquaculture is developing all around the world, and we in the United States are in a holding pattern,” says Main. “We haven’t done the critical research to develp the U.S. aquaculture industry because we’ve been so conservative in our approach to it. We really have to get involved in this industry — and do it in a safe and sustainable way.” The FDA’s ban on several fish species from China that contained prohibited antibiotics and chemicals is also adding to the urgency of passing legislation that will move U.S. aquaculture forward. And this lies at the heart of an even more serious concern. “If we’re completely dependent on other countries to produce our seafood, how will we know how safe it is?” asks Main. “If we don’t allow the U.S. industry to develop, then we’re going to be held hostage to overseas production for all the seafood that we eat.” While the federal aquaculture legislation shows promise of passing, there’s still much to be done to make sure that U.S. aquaculture production
10 www.mote.org • Mote Marine Laboratory
populations. It’s also home to Mote’s Center for Aquaculture Research and Development, which has been leading the way in aquaculture by developing innovative, cost-effective and ecologically sustainable systems and husbandry techniques. Mote’s technology produces highvalue marine and freshwater species such as sturgeon, snook, red snapper, red drum, pompano, coral and queen conch to supply the growing demand for food fish and to help replenish ocean resources. Mote shares the technology by publishing the research and presenting it at both state and national conferences, providing an economically feasible working model for others to emulate to ensure that aquaculture is done correctly and safely. If offshore aquaculture becomes a reality, which seems likely in the near future, Mote’s work will help to ensure that it, too, is done in an ecologically responsible fashion. Jim Michaels, who manages Mote’s Commercial Sturgeon Demonstration Program explains: “The key to offshore aquaculture is stocker fish — fish
Testing Technology Mote Aquaculture Park is inland, in eastern Sarasota County. Instead of using seawater and releasing wastewater back into the ocean, Mote has developed a closed water-recycling system. This system cleans the water so well that salt water is infinitely reusable, and only 15 percent of freshwater is disposed. Additionally, Mote does not use any antibiotics to maintain fish health. The water-recycling technology is important to the working model in several ways. It not only eliminates pollution and reduces water requirements, but it also enables aquaculture farms to move inland to cheaper land. This is very important to the cost-effectiveness of aquaculture in the U.S., where waterfront properties are priced in the millions. Mote’s highly efficient technology also helps to reduce the labor costs of aquaculture while ensuring a topquality product. The whole process is computerized, from feeding fish to the monitoring oxygen and temperature levels, to an alarm system that alerts staff to any malfunctions.
© Lawson Mitchell / Mote Marine Laboratory
Researchers at Mote Aquaculture Park are developing new methods that will allow them to grow Florida pompano using water-recirculating production systems. Pompano is an extremely popular food fish, and growing the species in tanks on farms could help relieve pressure on wild fish stocks. Reducing the cost of rearing fish is key to making aquaculture a viable business model for Florida farmers.
“There’s no place else like Mote Aquaculture Park in the United States,” says Main. “With the stateof-the-art commercial and research production systems; with innovations in design that reduce the amount of water required to produce marine and freshwater fishes; and the culture of a wide variety of species for food production and stock enhancment — it’s a unique set up.”
bringing numerous other species to market. “A lot of fish are going to do much better in tanks like we have at the Park,” says Main. “And we’ll be able to produce a lot of those species in land-based systems — as the technology is developed and refined, we will begin to reduce the operating costs.”
In addition to developing the fingerlings for the offshore systems and stock enhancement, Mote’s landbased systems will be important in
While Mote Aquaculture Park has an excellent start in developing the technology, a fire in July 2006 was a major setback. A 25,000 square-foot
A Setback
building was destroyed and one-third of the park’s sturgeon stock lost. These sturgeon had been nurtured for years and were ready to be sold for meat and caviar. The lost building and fish made for a combined $3 million loss. Thanks to community support, rebuilding at Mote Aquaculture Park is under way. John Pether, a Mote board member and CPA, is leading the effort. “Mote Aquaculture Park is extremely important for the public good. With continued financial support and in-kind donations, we can continue the innovative work that’s so vital to
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Main echoes Pether’s plea for support. “What we really need now is another major infusion of funding to see the development of this technology to its end. We’ve got a good start. But we need to have some sustainable funding in place for five to eight years to finish working out all the various aspects of this technology so that it’s ready to be transferred and used by the aquaculture industry.
ENVIRONMENTAL WIN-WIN
“We’re really taking aquaculture to a whole new level. In the past, we’ve just used the environment and all its good qualities to develop the husbandry techniques, and now we’re taking that resource and figuring out how to use it without impacting the natural environment. That’s a whole different approach — we’re not using the resource, we’re sustaining the resource.” ■
Mote Aquaculture Park’s focus on sustaining natural resources has resulted in an innovative project where the park’s wastewater is being used to grow wetland plants. The plants, in turn, are cleaning the water to make it reusable for plant and eventually fish production. Because of Mote’s waterrecycling technology, only 15 percent of the freshwater used at the park is diverted to a series of water treatment ponds and then used for irrigation. The goal is to reduce the water treated in ponds to five percent.
In the fall of 2006, Mote became the first organization in Florida to produce and distribute caviar, despite the loss of about one-third of its sturgeon stock in a July 2006 fire. Mote is in the process of replacing the building and tanks and is seeking additional funding to support the Park while it rebounds.
The project is a partnership with a local Sarasota company called Aquatic Plants of Florida, Inc. Here’s how it works:
For information about supporting these efforts, please contact John Pether at (941) 234-3566.
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© Lawson Mitchell / Mote Marine Laboratory
the growth of the U.S. aquaculture industry,” says Pether.
www.mote.org • Mote Marine Laboratory
“Right now we use the water to irrigate pasture land on the property, but we hope to eventually bring the water back into our aquaculture production facility to use it to grow more fish — to completely close the loop,” says Dr. Kevan Main, director of Mote’s Center for Aquaculture Research and Development.
• Wastewater from the fish tanks is filtered, and solid material is piped into an effluent pond, where a natural biological process breaks down the waste. • Using gravity, the water flows into a second pond with visibly cleaner water, and then to a series of additional ponds near the first pond. • Wetlands vegetation is planted in these ponds to absorb the excreted nutrients, such as phosphorous and nitrogen. The phosphorous and nitrogen help the plants grow, as the plants purify the water. Aquatic Plants of Florida eventually harvests the plants and moves them to areas where they’re used to restore important wetlands. The project is unique in that it cleans up wastewater and that the plants being raised are eventually used to restore wetlands altered by development, Main says. “We really are working on a number of different levels to make sure that Mote Aquaculture Park is truly sustainable. Using environmentally sound practices — whether in animal husbandry techniques or finding unique ways to use some of the byproducts — is an important area that we’re focused on here. These things must be key to developing new aquaculture practices in the U.S.”