75-12-A5
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Aquaculture
TranscriptAn experiment in lobster farming may result in helping to ease the world's food shortages. I'll be right back. Three years ago Dr. Robert Schleser, a scientist at the University of California's Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory imported a few New England lobsters, formerly known as homares americanus, from the Massachusetts Lobster Hatchery. With lobster populations in the cold New England waters continuing to decline and with the price of lobster in restaurants now up in the nine to twelve dollar range, Dr Schleser believed the time was ripe for lobster farming. At the Marine Laboratory he put each lobster in its own small tank, both to keep the lobsters from attacking and eating one another and to regulate their rate of growth. He fed them a diet of pellets rich in nutrients and controlled their environment of oxygenated seawater kept at a steady 70 degrees and thus was born the science of aquaculture. Today Schleser has 5,000 lobsters in his farm, with aquaculture about 90 percent of the lobster survived to maturity compared with odds of a hundred thousand to one in the open ocean. In the ocean it takes eight years or so for a lobster to reach the market size of one pound. In the lab it takes only two years and Schleser believes that can eventually be reduced. A computer monitors the aquaculture program to study cost relationships among many variable factors. Schleser says that if the cost of heating the seawater could be eliminated, the production cost could be cut by 24 cents a pound. He sees a link up between aquaculture farms and coastal power plants as a good way to do this, thus conserving fuel and cutting cost at the same time. He would use the warmed water discharge from the power plant's cooling system. A San Diego project similar to the Bodega one is studying this possibility. If the water quality proves to be high enough the scientists believe that the average power plant could sustain a farm of 10 million lobsters. The aquaculture projects have much broader implications according to Schleser. Food production today is based on fossil fuels. With supplies of natural gas and oil declining we must develop alternatives, such as aquaculture to increase food supplies. He believes that aquaculture once it's thoroughly proved in the laboratories can be used to harvest crops on a large scale to relieve food shortages in various parts of the world. Schlesser and his colleagues are banking on their lobsters to prove the feasibility of aquaculture. In fact in Schleser's office there is a poster of a big lobster with the caption "Lobster for President." This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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