|
February 12, 2002 AQUA-RESEARCH CENTER MAKING "NEW WAVE" IN FISH FARMING 
BALTIMORE, Md.-Adding a life-cycle study of a commercial crab at the Center of Marine Biotechnology fulfills COMB's 5-year plan for a for a wide range of fish research in a new, state-of-the-science, 20,000 square foot Aquaculture Research Center (above).  "The success of our Maryland blue crab work demonstrates that ARC is highly efficient for prototype production of either shellfish or finfish, marine or freshwater fish, and cold or warm water fish," says COMB Director Yonathan Zohar, a speaker at the conference "Water Farming and the World's Future," at Baltimore's Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, Feb. 12-14. COMB is part of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI).
 The ARC, on COMB's ground floor in downtown Baltimore, may be the only facility of its kind in the world to accommodate intense scientific research on so many kinds of aquatic animals and aspects of innovative mariculture technology, says Zohar.
ARC also fulfills a strategic goal of the University System of Maryland since 1997 for such an urban-based aquaculture scientific center. UMBI is one of 13 institutions in that system. In the fully contained ARC facility, researchers advance a "new wave" of marine aquaculture technology; says Zohar, with the potential for efficiently growing high-value, clean fish in warehouses that can operate in an urban or rural setting.  They study crabs, striped bass, trout and other fish in individual tanks that are eachcomputer controlled automatically for light intensity and "daylengths," temperature, salinity and other conditions. ARC has an innovative biological filtering and ozone purification systems to keep water in the tanks-ranging from four to 20 feet in diameter-clean and disease-free for high-density fish production. The facility also includes systems for pre-treating domestic water supply, the makeup of "instant ocean" water, and on-site wastewater treatment.
The environmentally sensitive aquaculture research facility, which exceeds the aquaculture industry's Performance Standards for Safely Conducting Research With Genetically Modified Fish and Shellfish, discharges no waste into the Baltimore harbor, a few yards away. 
In the first two years as a partially completed facility, the efficient and flexible nature of ARC has helped COMB scientists produce some outstanding new technologies: - The Maryland crab study has provided preliminary indications that by applying, for the first time, the tools of
 molecular genetics and biotechnology, a better understanding of the fundamental reproductive and physiological processes will make it possible for experimental release and study of juvenile crabs in the Chesapeake Bay with the goal of increasing harvests. - A commercial product, Aquagrow, developed at COMB in partnership with Martek Biosciences. The enrichment
food is based on algae for larval fish (right) and provides highly nutritious oils for both the fish and for humans who eat the fish. - European sea bream, a gourmet marine fish, was bred, spawned and hatched for the first time in a closed aquaculture system at COMB. At a cooking competition in May, 2001, leading Baltimore chefs introduced the new U.S. seafood by preparing sea bream dishes with new recipes they created for the occasion.
- Reproboost, a slow release reproduction hormone trigger, developed prior to ARC by Yonathan Zohar, has been demonstrated to help provide year round production of striped bass, sea bream, salmon, shad and other fish in closed, recirculating aquaculture and mariculture.
- Essential bacteria for purification of wastes from fish in high density systems.
ARC has a quarantine room, a diagnostics laboratory, a transgenic zebra fish laboratory and hatchery tanks designed to the needs of specific shellfish or finfish. The computer based data acquisition system is equipped to alert COMB personnel of automated problems by telephone pager 24 hours a day. Investigations in ARC are supported by a full range of laboratories and equipment nearby at COMB for carrying out physiological, hormonal and molecular work. # # #
UMBI technology transfer office, contact Rita Khanna, 410.385.6325, khannar@umbi.umd.edu
|
