THE AQUACULTURE DEVELOPMENT PARK AT HARBOR BRANCH OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTE: 20 YEARS OF OPERATION  

For more than 40 years, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute's aquaculture research enterprise has led the way in advancing aquaculture in Florida, the United States and internationally.  In 1996 Harbor Branch broke ground on the 30-acre Aquaculture Development Park (Park) that continues to host a mix of research and industry and fosters expansion of aquaculture through workforce training, production development and technology transfer. The Park includes 8 buildings totaling 39,000 square feet of space for marine and freshwater species such as fish, clams, shrimp, algae and seaweeds. In addition, the Park has an Aquatic Animal Health Lab, nutrition lab and recirculating systems.

Harbor Branch's workforce development impact has included a retraining program focused on clam farming for displaced fishermen in the 1990s. The Park housed a large-scale hatchery to produce the seed for the field-based program, and clam farming now is a prosperous business sector in Florida.  The Park's Aquaculture Center for Training, Education and Demonstration is used to facilitate vocational workshops and a degree program with Indian River State College.

Harbor Branch developed some of the first systems to grow warm water marine shrimp in low-salinity waters and developed similar techniques with other species such as Florida pompano. This latter work was part of a 10-year partnership with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, which produced advances in recirculating culture technology, nutrition for low-salinity culture of marine species including reduction of fish meal use, and husbandry techniques spanning egg to product. These and other research studies led to the present focus on land-based integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA). Now in its fifth year of operation at the Park, the IMTA system has enabled testing of several combinations of fed (e.g., fish, shrimp), extractive (e.g., urchins, sea cucumbers) and assimilative (e.g., macroalgae, Salicornia) culture species. Developing viable species and techniques for restoration and stock enhancement is another primary research focus, and currently includes seagrass culture for habitat restoration in the Indian River Lagoon and culture of prized sportfish for stock enhancement. The Park also serves as a commercial feasibility incubator, such as with the Zeigler Aquaculture Research Center, a Harbor Branch-Zeigler Bros., Inc. partnership in the Park.

The activities in the Harbor Branch Aquaculture Development Park are helping to meet one of the most significant long-term challenges we face: the need to expand aquaculture to help satisfy an expected doubling in the global demand for food over the next 40 years.