BY BO PETERSEN
Of The Post and Courier Staff

BLUFFTON --Anyone with a cast net and a pole would be green with envy.
Two huge nets were hoisted, bulging with gleaming shrimp. The catch weighed nearly half a ton, and it was just the beginning. State marine scientists harvested 4,000 pounds of bigger-than-large Pacific whites Tuesday.
The shrimp wasn't pulled from any of the acres of holding ponds spread across Waddell Mariculture Center, but from a modest greenhouse out back.
" Now that's a pretty sight, every farmer's dream," said Jeff Peterson, a Fernandina Beach, Fla., shrimp farmer who came to watch.
Four years into a climate-controlled research project, S.C. Department of Natural Resources biologists have produced 10 times the density of a commercial shrimp farm and doubled the size of the shrimp.
They think they're on the verge of delivering the technology for a homegrown product cost-effective enough to supplement the seasonal wild shrimp catch and help the state compete with cheaper, farm-raised imports.
In a "raceway" channel under the plastic of a greenhouse, shrimp can be raised all year long and protected from crop-ravaging diseases carried by birds and other animals. Diseases have ruined shrimp farms across the Lowcountry and around the world.
Researchers think the markets created by a year-round product would help seasonal shrimpers get a better price for the wild product. In the United States, 3 pounds of shrimp are eaten per person per year, said Al Stokes, center manager. More than 1 billion pounds per year are imported.
" This crop wouldn't compete with the local wild crop, but with the imports," he said. "We need to get (consumers) off that import habit."
" I tend to be a Pollyanna about this," said William Lacey, S.C. Commerce department business solutions director. "I think the work they've done here is pioneering, world-class."
Crop by crop, DNR scientists are learning how many shrimp-food pellets to feed, how to balance the "microbial community" in the water, its temperatures and aeration, to grow more and bigger shrimp in the same space. Oddly enough, the approach is modeled on chicken farming.
The rich microbe stew is recycled and reused instead of discharged. Farms could be inland instead of having to continually draw brackish water.
DNR marine scientist Craig Browdy stared into channel murk bubbling with shrimp and said, "This water is like gold. It looks like gold and it really is."
The goal is to get the production cost below $2 per pound. Economic modeling Browdy has done suggests the cost is now between $2 and $2.50, but in a larger-scale commercial operation it would be less.
Mills Rooks of Beaufort plans to use DNR techniques when he starts his own 20-acre operation in 2005. He hopes to produce 3 million pounds per year. He thinks he can get the production cost down to $1.75 per pound or less.
The shrimp harvested Tuesday were sold by sealed bid to Port Royal Seafood for $1.90 per pound.
" Every time they ratchet it up a few more thousand pounds per harvest, it approaches commercial viability," said Peterson, who's considering a greenhouse farm.
The Waddell center was on a list of facilities that DNR officials said earlier this year they might have to close if state budget cuts continue. Stokes said the operation has been cut back, but federal grants are paying for half the staff and for research in the shrimp project.
A handful of shrimp farmers and investors who came to watch the harvest pulled out cameras and began clicking, using words such as "gorgeous" to describe the shrimp. Jokes went back and forth about who had coolers.
Browdy put it in perspective for recreational shrimpers, who are limited to a cooler, or about 40 pounds of shrimp, per trip: A single toss of a 6-foot cast net into the greenhouse raceway would have pulled in 40 pounds. Tuesday's haul would have filled 1,000 coolers.