TROPICAL ORNAMENTAL MARICULTURE TECHNICIAN PROGRAM AT FLORIDA KEYS COMMUNITY COLLEGE: A CASE STUDY FROM CAMPUS TO CAREER

Mariculture has revolutionized how people obtain food, manage the environment, and mitigate species over-exploitation. At Florida Keys Community College, I was enrolled in the Tropical Ornamental Mariculture Technician (TOMT) Certificate program, which taught me how to breed, raise, and sustain an array of ornamental species, with a focus on the clownfish Amphiprion ocellaris. The program led me to an internship at American Mariculture Inc., an aquaculture farm that provides Litopenaeus vannamei (Pacific White Shrimp) to a variety of restaurants and consumers.  

The internship added a level of professionalism to my experience by enabling me to expand my knowledge and skills in a food aquaculture setting.  Beyond the classroom, it strengthened my understanding and speaking of Spanish, enhanced leadership and management skills, heightened understanding of genetics, data collecting, and recording, and conformed skills and duties to a large scale food operation.

The knowledge and skills I gained from the TOMT classes (Table 1) and the Aquaculture Learning Laboratory at FKCC directly fostered my success as an intern at AMI shrimp farm. The two experiences vastly expanded my education, and ultimately molded me into a competent mariculture technician in a diverse array of settings. As a result of my hard work and academic foundation, I was offered a full time position at AMI when I graduate in December 2017. I will be accepting this offer along with advancing my education by concurrently pursing a Bachelors degree at a local University.