Portfolio II: Applications of Technology

The Issue

Advances in environmental and aquatic science are often driven by specific needs, which then serve as a spur to the development of new technologies or the adaptation of existing ones. Much progress in understanding the wise use of estuarine and marine resources over these last two decades has come about because of technology. The reliance on remote sensing for synoptic tracking of water quality in Chesapeake Bay is a significant example - Maryland Sea Grant provided early support of airborne remote sensing, which has led to new insights about seasonal and interannual variability of phytoplankton, and is now an established component of monitoring and research in the Bay (see Estuarine Processes portfolio). Sea Grant has fostered the application of other innovative technologies, particularly for furthering our capabilities in aquaculture and for addressing key issues of environmental concern through advanced molecular and chemical research.

Aquaculture

In the past 15 years, aquaculture production of fish and shellfish worldwide has doubled and now represents more than 25 percent of global fish consumption. While a greater expansion of the industry is viewed as critical to seafood production, aquaculture has demonstrated its importance for restoration of living resources - this is especially so in the Chesapeake Bay for oysters, underwater grasses and fish stocks. Though commercial aquaculture has expanded in the U.S., it still lags far behind major world producers such as China and India; furthermore, expansion carries a potential downside.¹ Large-scale culture of fish, for example, requires immense volumes of fish oil and fish meal, the sources of which currently depend on harvesting ocean species; furthermore, intensive farming in open waters and ponds can lead to the destruction of habitat, declines in water quality and the spread of pathogenic disease. Clearly, aquaculture must be conducted within the context of environmental protection and ecological sustainability.

In Maryland and the mid-Atlantic, the development of aquaculture for food production has had mixed success, though its role in resource restoration has had demonstrable payoffs (see sidebar, Aquaculture: Linking Research to Restoration). While oyster farming must contend with the omnipresence of parasitic disease (and in Maryland with political and cultural traditions that have opposed leaseholds in the Bay for farming), recent advances in producing disease-resistant strains, developing new techniques for managing around disease and changing perspectives about oyster ecology hold greater promise for producing oysters through aquaculture than a decade ago (see Restoring Oysters portfolio). In contrast to oyster culture, clam farming is relatively new to the mid-Atlantic and has begun to expand slowly in coastal bays with some success (see Development of a Hard Clam Aquaculture Industry in Maryland's Seaside Bays in the Fisheries portfolio). On the other hand, commercial finfish farming for food production presents a different story.

During the 1980s and early 90s, the prospects for a high-growth industry were promising. The Maryland Sea Grant Extension Program (SGEP) designed extensive programs in finfish aquaculture to meet the needs of novice and veteran growers; these programs included demonstration projects, workshops, publications and videos. Though the industry has shown some gain, large production increases in open systems such as ponds or netpens appear to be limited for numbers of reasons - among them, high land costs, rigorous environmental regulations, threats of harmful algal blooms and unstable market prices. On the other hand, closed-loop, recirculating systems hold economic potential, though investment costs are large and success will depend, as they do for open systems, on optimizing all aspects of these operations, from controlling reproduction to producing fast-growing species and specific diets, to enhancing disease resistance and significantly improving biofilters.² Maryland Sea Grant's research and outreach support of aquaculture has focused on these issues in particular, which are applicable for food production and for resource restoration.

Biological and Chemical Technologies

Molecular biology and biotechnology have been offering novel approaches for dealing with a host of challenges, from remediating environmental degradation to developing new products and processes from living organisms. With the rich scientific expertise in these and related fields throughout Maryland, Sea Grant has encouraged researchers to address critical concerns in the state and region in fresh, innovative ways. One such concern is the high volume of crab wastes generated by crab processing plants in the mid-Atlantic and southeastern U.S. Every pound of picked crabmeat results in about six pounds of waste - about 4,000 tons in Maryland in an average year. Most landfills will no longer take this dense tonnage because crab waste releases ammonia and nitrates that can evaporate and seep through soil, potentially polluting shallow aquifers, streams and creeks. Another concern is microbial pathogens in the Bay that pose varying degrees of risk to public health and natural populations of economically important living resources. Determining the risk of such pathogens has been a perplexing issue, particularly when their potential effects are not readily discernible and do not appear to be an immediate problem.

1 – Naylor, R.L. et al. 2000. Effect of aquaculture on world fish supplies, Nature 40:1017-1024; Naylor, R.L. et al. 1998. Nature's subsidies to shrimp and salmon farming, Science 282:883-884.

2 – See Growing Fish Indoors, A Conversation with Yonathan Zohar, Maryland Aquafarmer, Spring 2000; Fish Culture in Maryland: A Conversation with Reginal Harrell, Maryland Aquafarmer, Fall 1999.