THE DELICATE BALANCE OF AQUACULTURE AT A PUBLIC AQUARIUM

New England Aquarium, in collaboration with Roger Williams University, is at the forefront of developing rearing techniques for select marine fish species in our exhibits. We are sharing our processes, culturing methods, and aquacultured fish with other aquariums to promote sustainable practices and reduce the impact on wild populations.

To maximize limitations on time, resources, and space, the Aquarium has developed a sustainable collections strategy which includes a Collections Management Committee and Live Foods & Larval Program. Once the exhibit collection plan has been vetted through the committee, key exhibit species are evaluated as potential candidates for aquaculture. These species are assessed using a set of criteria for inclusion, which includes: animal welfare concerns with regards to collecting practices, reducing resources and carbon footprint associated with shipping and transport, species that are considered short-lived or high rotation in NEAq exhibits, and species that are important to NEAq and/or the public aquarium industry.

Initial efforts to collect eggs from several multi-species exhibits proved difficult to control and some species were mistakenly reared, diverting space and resources from key focus species. This led us to switch attention to broodstock populations, which gave us full control over nutrition, light cycle, and egg collection and avoid future accidental rearing efforts. Ongoing work to catalogue eggs collected from exhibits for DNA sequencing will help identify species' eggs in future collections from multi-species exhibits.

The New England Aquarium has made strides in culturing marine species and live foods for our collections in the past few years under our Larval Program, including 6 species' first. This presentation will detail the methods, mishaps, and successes of aquaculture at a public aquarium.