aquaculture-center.com

Seafood could start moving from coasts to cow pastures, and it won’t be crawling on any vestigial limbs; scientists have found ways to grow the ocean’s bounty on dry land. Now they have to make it turn a profit.

Cutting-edge research at Mote Marine Laboratory’s Center for Aquaculture Research is making tank-based, inland fish farming cheaper, cleaner and sustainable. Mote scientists are crafting closed-circuit water recycling systems that produce negligible environmental impacts, which could be used some day in rural locations across the state as part of a fully integrated aquaculture industry, with feed producers, hatcheries, grow-out facilities and processors.

However the specter of global trade and real estate woes are casting a pall over Florida’s aquaculture industry, and making fish farming in the Sunshine State a risky business.

The Florida Department of Agriculture Division of Aquaculture reports that is increasingly difficult for fish farms to compete against foreign rivals, who are not all financially encumbered by strict labor laws and environmental safeguards.

“We are getting killed right now by global trade, we are seeing the industry shrink — it’s pure economics,” said Paul Zajicek, one of the division’s biological administrators. “When we had that real estate bubble, a lot of farms sold, their property got astronomically valuable. You look at our land prices in general — with the competitive nature of seafood in the world, land price alone makes it impossible.”

Yet Mote scientists believe the technologies they are developing now could be a boon to fish farms in America, where reports say the appetite for seafood is all but insatiable.

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