Industry interest piqued by last week's harvest at Waddell

BY PETER FROST, The Island Packet
Published Saturday, April 8, 2006

BLUFFTON -- In a little more than an hour Tuesday, more than 3,000 pounds of fresh white Pacific shrimp were harvested from an area spanning just one-tenth of an acre.
The shrimp measured between 6 and 8 inches long and weighed an average of 21.5 grams each -- jumbo shrimp by industry standards.
With its fifth consecutive successful harvest, the Waddell Mariculture Center, on the banks of the Colleton River in greater Bluffton, has developed technology to become the new model for the future of shrimp farming. The center is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Marine Shrimp Farming Program and aims to develop technology to increase domestic production and reduce U.S. reliance on imported shrimp.
At Tuesday's harvest, a few buckets of shrimp were held to the side for testing. The remainder was sold to Port Royal Seafood for commercial processing and distribution.
The harvest was more of a business meeting than a farming event. Prospective private shrimp farmers, facility builders, processors and university professors mingled with state Department of Natural Resources officials and Waddell employees to get insight on the latest farming methods and ideas to implement the technology elsewhere.
" We're trying to diminish the amount of imported product," said Al Stokes, manager of the mariculture center. "These harvests give us the opportunity to work with the industry to develop viable domestic commercial shrimp-farming opportunities in the state," Stokes said.
The center is considering pursuing a relationship with the University of South Carolina's Intellectual Property Office to explore ways to involve companies in implementing the technology. The university could help the mariculture center negotiate agreements with private interests.
Commercial partnerships could help the center fund more research through lucrative licensing fees and make it easier for the center to pursue patents on the technology, said Lisa Rooney, the director of the USC Intellectual Property Office.
" The main purpose would be to get research out of the (mariculture center) into the commercial marketplace," Rooney said. "If you can create a year-round fresh-shrimp market, there's value in that. You could have quite an industry here."
Craig Browdy, a senior marine specialist with the state Department of Natural Resources, said the primary initiative of the center is to develop a quality seafood product that can compete directly with imports but won't harm the environment. A flood of lower-priced imported shrimp has caused prices to fall as much as $4 per pound over the past five years. Some studies have shown evidence of the use of hormones and antibiotics in imported farm-raised shrimp. As required by federal law, the mariculture center uses no hormones or antibiotics. It's working to gain organic certification through the USDA.
" The organic angle is a big one," Browdy said. "The market in South Carolina for seafood is huge. The more of that we can provide from in-state resources, the better off we'll be."
The state-owned mariculture center is funded by state and federal grants and has been testing shrimp-farming techniques at the prototype production unit since 2003. The model the mariculture center is developing is capable of producing about 48,000 pounds of shrimp per acre.
In a closed-loop system housed in greenhouses, the technology allows year-round production of chemical- and drug-free jumbo shrimp, yielding up to four harvests a year. A new crop of shrimp takes between 60 and 140 days to mature, depending on the size of shrimp desired, Stokes said.
Shrimp are placed in saltwater that is pumped from the Colleton River and are fed a specially engineered diet. Researchers hope to eventually be able to locate shrimp-farming facilities farther inland from natural saltwater resources.
" I believe they're still just scratching the surface," said Joseph Staton, an assistant professor of biology at USC Beaufort. Staton is in talks with the center on a possible collaboration with the biology department, which he said could benefit both parties.
" This could grow like gangbusters," Staton said. "The more people that get involved in the research and development of a program like this, the bigger and more successful it could be."

Source:
The Island Packet