12 DECEMBER 2012 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG John Emil Halver, known throughout the aquaculture world as the “Father of Fish Nutrition,” died suddenly and unexpectedly at his home in Seattle on 24 October at the age of 90. He was born in 1922 in rural Woodinville, Washington. His father was a commercial sherman and then a sawmill superintendent and his mother was a rst-generation Norwegian immigrant. John was raised on the family’s small farm where he sold milk and then raised livestock to pay for his education. Determined to attend university but lacking the funds, he won an agricultural innovation scholarship to Washington State University using his high school chemistry knowledge to duplicate papyrus production with wheat straw. He graduated with a B.S. degree in chemistry, awarded in absentia while on army duty during World War II. Halver enlisted, was promoted to tank commander, and ultimately became platoon leader in the 399th Infantry Combat Team. He spent much of the war in France where his platoon took part in the famous Battle of the Bulge and subsequent warfare through the Siegfried Line to Stuttgart and Augsburg. He was highly decorated with two Bronze Stars for Valor and a Purple Heart. Returning to the USA in 1946, Halver embarked on his graduate education, rst at Purdue University and then at Washington State University, where he received an M.S. degree in organic chemistry. He then enrolled in a Ph.D. program in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, graduating in 1953 in nutritional biochemistry. His dissertation research involved the development of a vitamin-free, semi-purified test diet for salmon that would support growth and to which vitamins could be added or deleted to establish their nutritional necessity. Others had attempted to do this without complete success. Halver was able to develop and test this diet in short order, so short in fact that his supervisory committee then required him to use the new diet to determine the qualitative requirements for many vitamins before he could graduate. While still a graduate student, Halver was offered a position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to become Director of the Western Fish Nutrition Laboratory, which at that time did not exist. While a new laboratory was being constructed in Cook, Washington, near the Columbia River, he began the fish nutrition research program at the University of Washington in 1950. Over the next 25 years, he and his John Emil Halver (1922-2012) Obituaries H. Rouse Caffey, former Chancellor of the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, was a dear friend of the World Aquaculture Society. He took a personal interest in the Home Office of the WAS. In the late 1980s, the Home Office of the Society was operating in Pleasant Hall on the LSU campus and then in an unoccupied fraternity building. After getting bounced around from place to place, Rouse Caffey stepped in and, according to former Home Office Manager Juliette Massey, said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” In his position as Associate Director of the Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station, he explained the value of WAS to LSU administrators. As a result of Dr. Caffey’s efforts, LSU provided space for WAS in the John Parker Agriculture Center, and the Home Office has been there ever since. Not only did he arrange for the space but also provided resources to renovate and remodel the office. Juliette recalls numerous occasions when Dr. Caffey would drop by the Home Office to visit and offer encouragement. WAS occupied the space rent-free until 2007, thanks to Dr. Caffey’s support. Rouse Caffey was a strong supporter of Louisiana aquaculture. As Associate Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, he created numerous faculty positions in aquaculture, including those for crawfish culture, feeds and nutrition, genetics and breeding, fish husbandry, agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, fish parasites and diseases, and extension. As Chancellor, he secured a commitment from Governor Edwin Edwards to fund construction, completed in 1992, of a 22,000 ft2 aquaculture research and office building on land owned and managed by LSU near campus. As Chancellor-emeritus Dr. Caffey co-led an aquaculture task force to develop and publish the Louisiana Aquaculture Plan. His support for aquaculture extended beyond Louisiana. Jim Avault, one of the founders of WAS and a past president, accompanied Rouse Caffey on trips to Nicaragua, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Belize. Dr. Caffey was keen about the possibility of establishing an off-campus aquaculture research station in Belize. Dr. Caffey was trained as an agronomist and a rice breeder. Early in his career, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while Superintendent of the LSU Rice Research Station in Crowley, he conducted some early research on the effects of some commonly used rice pesticides on crawfish. H. Rouse Caffey (1929-2012)
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjExNDY=