Yellow Tang (Zebrasoma flavescens ) is the most heavily collected reef species from Hawaii with nearly 300,000 fish being removed from reefs annually for the aquarium trade. Recent legislation in Hawaii has temporally suspended the collection of aquarium species, pending the completion of a comprehensive environmental impact study. Therefore, this highly popular, and iconic, species will (at least for the foreseeable future) need to be obtained from aquacultured sources. In 2015, Oceanic Institute of Hawaii Pacific University (OI) was successful in overcoming the tremendous challenges culturing this important species. For the first time, the culture of Yellow Tang was shown to be technically possible, and this achievement provided significant hope that many other reef species might also be able to be cultured using similar methods. Over the past several years, this has indeed been shown to be the case, with dozens of new species being cultured by facilities around the world owing in large part to the technical achievements (the barriers being broken down) by OI.
The recent successful culture of several coral reef species for the marine aquarium trade has sparked renewed excitement and enthusiasm for this alternative, and perhaps more sustainable, supply of marine ornamental organisms. However, despite these exciting successes, commercial adoption of production methods remains low due to the limited efficiency of current production methods (low numbers of juveniles being produced at relatively high costs compared to wild supplies). This project seeks to address these challenges by building upon prior succ esses and in collaboration with Biota Aquariums, LLC aims to significantly improve the yield of Yellow Tang production. Improving the yield (egg to juvenile) will have the most profound effect on lowering total cost of production thereby greatly improving commercialization potential for this, and likely other Acanthuridae, species.
This presentation will provide an overview of current production methods in use (at OI) and highlight the current state of commercialization potential for this species. Specifically, we will review the current mean production yield experienced after one year of commercial- scale culture effort and review opportunities for improved production. A separate presentation will cover (in more detail) the specific areas of research we are pursuing in order to improve survival over several critical periods .