Portfolio II: Applications of Technology

Selected Achievements And Impacts

The aim of aquaculture and new technologies research is to "deliver" the potential application of findings to those constituent interests that can make the best use of them and in ways or formats that are most useful. For this reason, we have worked to ensure effective linkages among Sea Grant Extension Program (SGEP) specialists, researchers and Sea Grant Communications. In 1996, for example, four years after publication of The University of Maryland System Aquaculture Plan, SGEP organized a university-wide workshop of scientists and extension specialists to update current research and assess new directions. SGEP faculty are currently working with the Sea Grant director to organize a university-wide "Aquaculture Workshop and Institutional Summit" that has the goal of reassessing the university strategy for developing aquaculture activities and linking new initiatives to those detailed in the National Sea Grant Initiative, Marine Aquaculture: Economic Opportunities for the 21st Century.

With the increasing applications of molecular biology, we strengthened our outreach linkages with the University of Maryland Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB). For example, our Finfish Specialist took on added responsibilities as a Biotechnology Specialist and developed cooperative programs with faculty at the Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB). The Sea Grant Extension Program has established strong academic partnerships throughout the University System to leverage outreach efforts related to aquaculture and new technologies. In 1998, SGEP specialists worked closely with the Agriculture Experiment Station and were instrumental in organizing Striper 2000, Research Advances on Striped Bass and Its Hybrids, a meeting that brought scientists, industry leaders and growers together. Maryland and Delaware Sea Grant organized East Coast Live: The Business of Marketing Live Aquatic Products, a major conference held in Annapolis in November 2000. These examples are indicators of our continuing efforts to ensure linkages between university-based research and diverse stakeholders, including Extension Specialists.

Aquaculture Research and Outreach

 

• Yonathan Zohar's pathbreaking endocrinological and molecular studies have been detailing the processes that regulate the onset of puberty in striped bass. His work, which led to the key discovery of a previously unknown maturational gonadotropin that appears to be an instrumental factor in egg and sperm development, has enabled him and his colleagues to develop new spawning technologies. These technologies are making it possible for growers to spawn fish on demand, rather than depend on catching gravid broodstock from the wild during their brief period of spawning; thus, growers will be better able to plan production schedules in order to meet market and restoration needs. There is strong evidence that the gonadotropin system in striped bass is widely shared among other commercial species, for instance, snappers, flounders and black seabass and that this technology is transferable.

   

• Reginal Harrell (R/F-83) (Univ. Maryland Center of Environmental Science and now Regional Director for the Univ. Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station) and Scott Lindell (AquaFuture, Inc.) evaluated the growth performance of five strains of striped bass representing a wide geographic range with distinct genetic diversity (R/F-83). Their goal was to determine the fastest growing and best surviving strains in order to identify a cost-effective means for improving production of striped bass hybrids. They found that they could design and develop a selection program that would exploit genetic variation for performance traits between and within families and strains. Their analysis showed that a 10 to 20 percent improvement in growth rate is possible in the first generation of breeding.

   

• Whether growing fish for food production or release, key factors for optimizing growth are diets tailored for the individual species at different life stages. An important nutritional element for cultured striped bass is fatty acids, a major energy source, which striped bass cannot synthesize. In a study to determine the effects of a highly unsaturated fatty acid supplement to Artemia on the production and performance of hybrid striped bass, Reginal Harrell and Tuu-Jyi Chai (R/F-69) (UM Center for Environmental Science) found that the traditional practice of feeding newly-hatched Artemia nauplii to both striped bass and hybrids is inadequate, which helped explain why the success of intensive larval culture had not been successful. By enriching Artemia with highly unsaturated fatty acids, the researchers reared up to 80 percent of the larvae through metamorphosis under intensive culture conditions.

   

• Mary Hagedorn (Smithsonian Institution) has been employing the zebrafish as a model for understanding the permeability of embryos to cryoprotectants in order to develop a low-cost germ plasm cryopreservation system that would be applicable to many fish species (R/F-84). She has found that the boundary separating the developing embryo from the yolk is impermeable to a number of commonly-used cryoprotectants; she is now focusing her studies on the potential of preserving fish oocytes that have not been activated by fertilization (R/AQ-02). Though successful cryopreservation has so far remained elusive, Hagedorn has clarified why traditional techniques are not applicable to fish and is pursuing promising new avenues of research.

   

• Sea Grant Extension and Communications work closely in a coordinated program of specially targeted materials for constituent interests, including new and potential growers, resource managers, researchers, extension specialists and educators. SGEP has been publishing the quarterly Maryland Aquafarmer which covers wide-ranging issues on applications of research; many articles have been reprinted in the trade magazine Aquaculture and other publications, such as Coast Watch (North Carolina Sea Grant), newspapers and industry newsletters. Over the last decade, we have produced a workbook on finfish aquaculture; these materials, which are particularly useful for smaller aquaculture operations and educators, are now on-line and have been used widely together with three videos that we produced with support from the Northeast Regional Aquaculture Center: Cage Culture: Raising Fish in Ponds, Farming Fish in Open Ponds, and Producing Striped Bass in Hatcheries.

   

• Aquaculture in Action. In collaboration with Carroll County Public Schools, SGEP has created a network of aquaculture educators in Maryland who now use recirculating system aquaculture as a teaching tool. SGEP conducted two six-day summer workshops for teachers in 1998 and 2000 to demonstrate the design, building and setting up of aquaculture systems for the raising and release of fish into local waters.

Biological and Chemical Technologies

 

• In studying a newly discovered marine bacterial species (strain 2-40), isolated from the marsh grass Spartina,Ron Weiner (R/BT-07) has found that Strain 2-40 produces at least 12 enzyme systems that can degrade common, complex carbohydrates, including chitin (from crab shell), agar and alginic acid. Weiner's goal is to unravel the biochemical and cellular processes that enable strain 2-40 to so efficiently break down these compounds. To date, he has purified several of the enzymes, which will be scaled up to test for commercial applications and has filed disclosures. At the same time, plans are underway to test enzymes for the remediation of crab wastes at seafood processing operations.

   

• Saul Roseman (R/BT-03) received funding from Maryland Sea Grant as well as the National Marine Biotechnology Initiative and NIH to investigate the mechanisms underlying the ability of the marine bacterium Vibriofurnissii to grow with chitin as a sole carbon source. Employing a variety of molecular and biochemical techniques Roseman and co-workers developed new methods to selectively degrade chitin to yield short chain oligosaccharides in an economical fashion. A number of these small compounds have extremely high value in the medical and basic research arenas and patents are now pending for the processes developed. An article in Marine Notes, "Chitin Breakdown: The Bacterial Way" has elicited a number of requests for further information.

   

• Working on a much larger scale, Greg Payne (R/BT-04) has been developing industrial scale processes for remediation of crab waste. Entrepreneurs on Maryland's Eastern Shore began to explore this possibility of composting in the early 1990s. While composting of crab waste is feasible, greater profits can be realized from purified chemical products such as chitosan, a derivative of chitin that has numerous high value industrial uses. The chemical process for extracting chitin and processing chitosan is very expensive. Payne applied enzyme technologies developed for advanced waste management to the problem. With support from the National Marine Biotechnology Initiative and Maryland Sea Grant, he studied how the structure of chitosan could be controllably altered to allow manufacturers to tailor its properties for a variety of uses. At the same time, he began working with industry through the ChitinWorks, a new independent company located in Cambridge, Maryland, close to major crab processors. The plant is designed to receive up to twenty tons of crab waste a day. These wastes are stabilized in a pretreatment stage to inhibit rotting; acids are then used to remove minerals from the crab shells. Bases are employed to remove any proteins or meat tucked into the shells before a final processing step that produces chitosan. A good deal of proteinaceous waste is generated from this operation, which is shipped to another local company, New Earth Services for composting. The first customer for chitosan will be Venture Chemicals, a specialty chemical company in Louisiana whose product line is based on natural polymers like chitosan, which the company expects to sell as a drilling fluid additive.⁴ Payne has filed a patent for portions of his enzymatic modification methodology. An article in Marine Notes, "Treasure from Trash," also elicited many inquiries for further information and contact with Greg Payne.

   

• Frank Hetrick's (R/F-70) research on the effect of microbial pathogens on striped bass provided details of the changes occurring as infections progressed; he also developed and applied a series of new technologies - in particular ELISA methods - that have lent themselves to speedy identification of fish pathogens.

   

• Theodore Graczyk's (R/F-88) techniques for assessing the potential risks of the protozoan pathogen Cryptosporidium to human health in the Chesapeake are very sensitive and have proven to be very useful. Oysters exposed to agricultural runoff do in fact accumulate the pathogen, suggesting that added precautions need to be employed before eating raw product. This work has had immediate application for state health and environmental agencies and the techniques have been widely employed.

   

• Maryland Sea Grant Extension has partnered with the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute in a major K-16 undertaking at the Columbus Center in Baltimore, the Science and Technology Education Program (SciTech). This program provides educators with training and tools to teach science in a more engaging way. Since 1995, the education programs have reached nearly 30,000 students and teachers in intensive "hands-on" laboratory-based activities that stimulate thought and excite participants. Two interactive web-based lessons have been developed, entitled Biofilms and Biodiversity and the Oyster Anatomy Lab.