8 December 2011 Remembering Dean Farrell Dean was born on 5 October 1931 and passed away recently, a little more than a week after his 80th birthday. He grew up in Minnesota. Dean joined the U.S. Army and, in 1950-51, served in the Korean War. That war made a big impression on him. He was wounded two or three times and had incredible stories, including being under fire in a foxhole along with the “enemy.” In the 1970s he owned and ran a fishing boat in the Caribbean and had a crew diving for spiny lobsters. The mid 1980s marked his venture into aquaculture research and he was most interested in tilapia aquaculture. He became well known at conferences and was ravenous for information, academic as well as what was happening in the real world. He traveled the world to see aquaculture facilities and became a walking aquaculture encyclopedia. He bought some land in Desert Hot Springs, California, in about 1996, and began building SeaGreen Biotechnology, his tilapia farm. He sold the farm in 2004, but remained interested in aquaculture and was forever continuing to learn and help people with answers to their questions. — Colin Bornia Dean was my best friend for many years. We go way back. Bill Engler and Dean were experimenting with acid titrations in California. This was the limited water exchange strategy to control NH3 via pH under 7. At the time it was a big discovery and Dean remained very proud of that. Dean talked to everyone and generated many new ideas and approaches to aquaculture science. He would ask me 26 questions and was disappointed in the answers to three. One was the lifespan of an algae cell, which I guessed at three days. The next week I received a box full of technical papers, 30 pounds to be sure, detailing the correct answer. Over the years he loved to play devil’s advocate to generate debate over aquaculture engineering and production issues. He was a very stimulating and unique individual who made significant contributions to our understanding of fish culture and recirculating systems. — Ray DeWandel I remember when Dean came to me following a lecture I gave, held my shirt, and started asking questions. I could answer the really basic questions but others raised points and topics I had not considered. Not too long after, I had dinner with him, talking about the physics of gas transfer to water, novel aeration systems, and the possibility of controlling ammonia toxicity through pH control. He seemed to know everything, yet curious to learn more, respecting whatever others would say. I got in the habit of meeting Dean and corresponding with him to learn about points I wrongly did not consider and work that I had not paid attention to. The astonishing fact was that Dean did not have formal academic education in aquaculture. He was a self-made man, learned by reading and participating in conferences and respecting whatever he read or heard, an attitude we often lack, assuming we know better. Dean’s approach was that he needed to know more and to learn from everyone. Dean lived alone and devoted all his thoughts to aquaculture. Besides his interest, devotion, and expertise in aquaculture, he was always ready to help anyone that requested advice. Several times I told him that he should charge a fee (and he needed the money) for the free advice he gave, often to people who could afford to pay and who could make a lot of money from this advice. He always told me that he enjoyed helping people and he did not want to charge them. Aquaculturists all over California would call him, ask questions, and request support. He always got into the problem, reviewed the issue, and offered a solution. Dean was very humane, kind, and good-hearted. After he sold his farm, he continued to feel responsible for the well-being of the workers and even his farm dog. One day, on the way to his former farm, we stopped by a supermarket and Dean came out with a grilled chicken. When we got to the farm, following hugs with the Mexican guy that used to work with him, Dean gave the chicken to the dog, saying that he needed to make him happy too. I (and my wife Mira) will remember him and miss him for a long time. — Yoram Avnimelech It took me a long time to figure out Dean Farrell. I would see him at WAS conferences, limping around the trade show, always asking questions with his distinct gravelly voice, never feeling intimidated about talking and arguing with people who had more formal education than him, displaying a refreshing openness for learning and a seemingly insatiable hunger for knowledge. For years, I thought his attendance at conferences was a hobby bordering on an obsession. He was sucking up as much information as he could but not really doing anything with it. He loved to argue about minutiae, such as the relative merits of one kind of biofilter over another, but he could also see the big picture. Finally, after many years of attending WAS and aquaculture engineering conferences, Dean synthesized everything he had learned and applied it to the development of a commercial tilapia farm. His intensive approach was elegantly simple: use the carbon dioxide generated by fish respiration to keep the pH of the culture water low enough to control the toxicity of
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