World Aquaculture Magazine - June 2021

44 JUNE 2021 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S .ORG and representing a major step towards domestication. To date, tens of thousands of fingerlings have been produced and provided to private partners for grow-out and eventual market distribution. On average, these fish reach a whole fish market size of 450-500 g within nine months of hatching (Fig. 1; Buchalla et al. 2020). Three organizations were involved in these grow-out studies, utilizing flow-through, RAS and pond-raceway technologies, with salinities ranging from 7 to 35 ppt. Beaver Street Fisheries (US) operates one of the largest seafood distribution companies in the United States and has expressed interest in the potential of marine finfish aquaculture to supplement its traditional wild-caught products. At a subsidiary site in the Bahamas, Beaver Street Fisheries have expanded operations to include numerous grow-out tanks for a variety of species including Nassau grouper, Pacific olive flounder, and most recently, American red snapper. Grow-out experiments at this facility have demonstrated that American red snapper can reach a size suitable for filleting (Fig. 2) in just over one year while maintaining excellent feed conversion ratios. Moreover, testing has shown this species to be highly marketable, with a high meat-to-bone ratio, thick fillets, and an overall appearance, texture and taste that are well- received by vendors at public markets and restaurants. American red snapper has also proven to be extremely hardy. Horse Creek Aqua Farm, on the Florida west coast, has successfully demonstrated the ability to raise red snapper at commercial densities at salinities as low as 7 ppt. Indeed, fingerlings were transferred from UMEH at about 10 g and stocked and raised in raceways placed in T he Lutjanidae (snapper) family is one of the most economically significant finfish species in the United States and the Caribbean, frequently harvested for commercial purposes from the Western Atlantic Ocean. Of all snapper species, the American red snapper Lutjanus campechanus represents one of the most valuable fish species in the United States, with annual landings exceeding 7,250 t (SEDAR 2018). For decades, regulators have attempted to balance the species’ economic importance to fishing communities with the management needs associated with preservation of a suitable wild spawning stock (Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council 2018). Demand for red snapper has continued to increase, piquing the interest of the aquaculture community. Funded by NOAA and Florida Sea Grant, the University of Miami Experimental Hatchery (UMEH) has been developing and improving scalable methodologies for the aquaculture of this important finfish species (Benetti et al. 2020). Specifically, two significant bottlenecks in juvenile production have been resolved by developing techniques for broodstock maturation and environmentally controlled volitional spawning, as well as generating a reliable larval rearing method based solely on feeding rotifers Brachionus rotundiformis as the initial food item for snapper larvae, which until recently was dependent on the use of copepods. While still being improved, these methodologies have been yielding 5-11 percent survival rates from egg to graded fingerling (McGuigan et al. 2020). Significantly, the F1 generation raised from eggs at UMEH has reached sexual maturity and begun spawning, effectively closing the life cycle of the species The Next Step Towards Commercialization: Validating the Market Potential of American Red Snapper Lutjanus campechanus David Miranda, Charles McGuigan, Jon Chaiton, Alex Henderson, Ben Frisch, Carlos Nieves, Carlos Martinez and Daniel Benetti FIGURE 1. Red snapper Lutjanus campechanus weighing approximately 1 kg were harvested at the University of Miami Experimental Hatchery and shipped for product market fit studies by MarePesca LLC. FIGURE 2. Red snapper produced by University of Miami and grown by Tropic Seafood being processed for distribution to markets.