World Aquaculture December 2020

WWW.WA S.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • DECEMBER 2020 51 Cobia fingerlings produced at UMEH in collaboration with Open Blue Sea Farms. vision will unblock, simplify and optimize the critical obstacles toward a fully automatic rotifer culture system. If successful, this will improve the efficiency of commercial-scale rotifer culture and reduce human labor, thereby reducing the overall cost of the operation. As part of this research, we are also working on a publicly accessible rotifer culture image dataset designed for deep learning experiments and modeling packages. These resources will encourage both the aquaculture and the AI communities to participate in developing next-generation aquaculture hatchery technologies. Interactions with the Seafood Industry andMarketing Efforts With aquaculture products representing over half of the seafood consumed by humans globally, it is critical that aquaculture research and development activities be conducted with the global seafood industry, markets and seafood marketing efforts in mind. The UM Aquaculture Program is involved in numerous initiatives aimed at improving the seafood industry through establishment of effective and sustainable seafood production technologies. New projects on yellowtail snapper and olive flounder are examples of research aimed at assisting working waterfronts and coastal communities through development of sustainable aquaculture technologies for these species. With support fromNOAA and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council (ASMFC), such projects offer an opportunity to bridge the gap between wild and farmed seafood production, while offering resiliency for communities that have historically been reliant solely on wild-catch fisheries. Through research into not only the technological barriers of raising and marketing the fish, but also the social and economic challenges associated with such projects, these research efforts are expanding the impact of the UMAquaculture Program in new and exciting directions in the seafood industry. Additionally, researchers of the UMAquaculture Program are looking at improving the ecological, physiological and economic efficiencies of producing, marketing and consuming fish through promoting the value of whole, plate-size fish for the North American market. This work has focused on the ecological and economic advantages of producing whole plate-size fish and proposes a marketing strategy to develop and implement this widely successful worldwide concept in the US. The large North American seafood market is a vast field for implementing this concept because the composition of the American population has an important contribution from foreigners and immigrants of different origins, particularly from countries where plate-size whole fish are routinely consumed. The greater physiological and ecological efficiencies of harvesting fish just before they reach sexual maturity and begin reproducing is well known and documented. For several commercially important species such as snappers, groupers, pompanos and others, this generally occurs at 400-600 grams at 10- 12 months of age, corresponding precisely to plate-size whole fish. Aquaculture is the most sustainable alternative to meet an increasing demand for plate-size whole fish, benefiting from greater business ( C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 5 4 )