Aquaculture 2025

March 6 - 10, 2025

New Orleans, Louisiana USA

OYSTER-FLIPPING ROBOTS TO EXPANDING WORKFORCE ACCESSIBILITY – AN UPDATE ON THE MIT SEA GRANT AQUACULTURE PROGRAM

Danny Badger*, Michael Triantafyllou, Themistoklis Sapsis, Robert Vincent, Mary Newton Lima, Carolina Bastidas, Andrew Bennett, Ben Bray, Lily Keyes, Juliet Simpson 

MIT Sea Grant
12 Emily St.
Cambridge, MA 02139
badgerd@mit.edu



The MIT Sea Grant sustainable aquaculture program has grown in recent years, in part facilitated by the 2021 hire of its first Marine Extension Specialist to be focused on aquaculture. The development of autonomous technology to improve the safety and efficiency of aquaculture operations remains a primary area of ongoing activity. However, we have been broadening our efforts, expanding the aquaculture workforce, supporting farm resilience in the event of oil spills, pursuing better alignment of aquaculture operations around eelgrass with scientifically informed regulations, visualizing the myriads of shellfish jurisdictions in Massachusetts and harvest statuses to be more accessible to all harvesters and constituents, and more. Join us as we lay out our aquaculture portfolio and consider the future directions of this growing program.