THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 29, 1994 TAG: 9408290064
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: Long : 112 lines
Craig Sullivan, associate professor at North Carolina State University, half-jokingly calls himself a ``fish gynecologist and obstetrician.''
But using some of the same tests as human gynecologists - ultrasounds, biopsies and early pregnancy tests - Sullivan and fellow researcher Ron Hodson, associate director of North Carolina Sea Grant, are helping increase productivity in a growing aquaculture industry.
Their work is just the latest in a decade of research at NCSU and elsewhere that has spawned a new industry in eastern North Carolina and improved the wild stocks of striped bass, one of the most popular game fish.
``What we have done, collectively, is foster the growth of a new industry in North Carolina,'' Sullivan said.
And they hope to transfer some of the lessons learned from their research on striped bass to other fisheries to benefit farmers and fishermen.
For six years, research by Sullivan and Hodson has focused on the reproductive systems of striped bass, a fish popular with commercial and sports anglers that migrates along the Atlantic Coast and has an average lifespan of about 25 years.
``This fish is the most promising new form of fish culture in North America,'' Sullivan said. Fish farmers cross striped bass, a saltwater fish also known as rock, with the freshwater striped bass to produce the hybrid striped bass - a fish that has become one of the backbones of aquaculture in the region.
A hybrid striped bass can be distinguished from its parent because the black stripes that make a striped bass easily identifiable are broken on a hybrid striped bass.
Considered a gourmet fish, the hybrid striped bass, like its parent, is prized in New York restaurants and other metropolitan cities in the Northeast.
Because the demand for the fish is great and the numbers of striped bass caught in the wild have declined, the price of farm-raised hybrid striped bass is high - about $2.50 a pound.
Few fish farms anywhere raised hybrid striped bass before the mid-1980s, primarily because farmers had to catch from the area's rivers and sounds the striped bass that are crossbred to make the hybrid.
``Imagine raising chickens if you had to go out into the wild and catch each new generation,'' Sullivan said. ``That's what these growers had to do.''
In 1988, he and Hodson teamed up to change that.
After a trip to eastern North Carolina, they realized that the area was ripe for the development of an aquaculture industry. They also knew the key to developing that industry would be to control the breeding cycle of the fish.
``We had an existing industry, but we knew the industry would be limited until we could supply a domesticated broodstock,'' Hodson said.
Sullivan, 42, a former cranberry farmer and commercial fisherman from Massachusetts, studies the reproductive characteristics of the fish in his laboratory at NCSU. Hodson tests his partner's findings in indoor production ponds at NCSU's field lab in Aurora, on the southern shore of the Pamlico River.
``Although we use high-tech tools to answer the questions, our goal has been to develop low-tech solutions that are practical for use on the farm today,'' Hodson said.
The team has applied for Federal Drug Administration approval of a pellet that farmers could use to improve the fertility of their fish.
And the team has developed an ultrasound procedure - with the same equipment used on humans - to study ovulation cycles in fish.
``The human parallels just go on and on,'' Sullivan said. ``We're trying to take these great strides in human medicine and fertility research and apply them to fish.''
Funding for the multiyear project comes from North Carolina Sea Grant, which has helped foster the new industry's growth in the state since 1987, and a National Coastal Research and Development Institute grant, which helps make the new technology available to growers.
Since Sullivan and Hodson began their research, the area around the tiny town of Aurora - home to farmers, fishermen and Texasgulf Co.'s giant phosphate mining operation - has become the center of the striped bass aquaculture industry in North Carolina.
Of 12 striped bass operations in the state, eight are located within about 30 miles of the NCSU field lab, Hodson said.
In 1993, North Carolina produced about 600,000 pounds, or 10 percent, of the 6 million pounds of hybrid striped bass produced nationally.
And Hodson expects national production to exceed 10 million pounds by the year 2000 as new markets open up in other American regions and Europe.
This steadily growing market convinced Beaufort County farmer Lee Brothers to switch from growing corn, soybeans and tobacco to growing hybrid striped bass.
``It's a growing industry with a greater profit margin than other crops,'' said Brothers, owner of Carolina Fisheries of Aurora.
He now produces 200,000 pounds of hybrid striped bass a year and 4 million fingerlings, or young fish, that he sells to other growers.
While the work at NCSU has helped spawn the striped bass aquaculture industry, it has also helped U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service efforts from Maryland through Georgia to restock the fish in the nation's rivers, Sullivan said.
And some see hybrid striped bass farming as another tool that the area's tobacco farmers can use to help them diversify.
``It's a viable option,'' Sullivan said. The region has ``a readily available supply of fresh water, clay soil, a mild climate. . . a progressive agribusiness community. . . and a long tradition of farmer-fishermen.''
``These people aren't going to sit on their hands, they'll diversify,'' he said.
Said Hodson: ``This is a classic (agriculture) extension project. It shows that if you demonstrate something and it's good, people around it see it and say, `I can do that.' ''
Sullivan and other NCSU researchers are broadening the work they have done on striped bass to other species of fish - notably summer flounder, southern flounder and several types of grouper - hoping to expand aquaculture and hatchery opportunities for these fish. by CNB