On Monday 24th February 2015, Tom Blacker of IAF visited two special scientific research sites for aquaculture. He followed the journey of 25,000 trout from the University of Southern Mississippi’s (USM) Gulf Coast Research Laboratory – The Thad Cochran Marine Aquaculture Centre’s RAS system near Gulfport and Biloxi - to the Lyman Fish Hatchery. He reports below on copepods, trout and more from Mississippi, USA

1. T
ravelling from New Orleans with a
group of around 40 delegates from
the Aquaculture America 2015
conference, the first faces welcom-
ing our group on one of six mini tours of the
Thad Cochran Marine Aquaculture Centre
were researchers Michael and Adam.
Adam was a leading researcher of
copepods and actively works with Dr Eric
Henry from Reed Mariculture in using their
InstantAlgae products.
Adam explained that non-algal live diets
are his research area of specialism at the
moment and he is looking to produce around
500,000,000 (that’s half a billion) copepods
per week. He admits to an ambition of being
part of the Centre’s goal to be the world
leader in copepod production. These will be
used for feed trials. After a stint researching
many different aquaculture species in Hawaii
he prefers now to work with slightly looser
regulations on imports and exports of fish and
supplies in Mississippi.
He explained in detail that feeding sea
trout (Cynoscion nebulosus) rotifers result in
unpredictable outcomes whereas copepods
are better, after much hard work to develop it
fully. Also red snappers are efficient consum-
ers of copepods.
There were many buildings at the Centre
over its 20ha (45 acres) of space for aquacul-
ture, each housing different species and for
different research experiments.
There were some Integrated Recycling
System raceways for shrimp, RAS tanks for
red snapper and trout as well in the Centre’s
complex.
An outside greenhouse in the centre
cultivates and fixes waste-water produced by
the site. Water reeds were growing for both
marsh research into environmentally friendlier
aquaponics for the Centre and beyond. They
hope to expand aquaponics to fix water for
use on the water produced from the shrimp
raceways as well as being sustainable.
Following the tour bus
At around mid-morning of the tour, the
25,000 trout were counted by hand and
then pumped into the stainless steel trailer
on the back of a USM truck. The truck
then followed the tour’s bus from Jackson
County to Harrison County to the Mississippi
Department of Marine Resources (DMR),
Lyman Fish Hatchery Centre which is located
30 miles north-west on Fish Hatchery Road,
just off the Little Bilox River and Interstate 10.
The leader at the Lyman Fish Hatchery is
Dr Kelly Lucas, the Chief Scientific Director of
the DMR. Dr Lucas gave a brief history of his
113ha (280 acre) site: the Hatchery began in
the early 1930s and transferred to the DMR
in 2007.
From 2008 they have broadened their
remit into both freshwater and saltwater
species for research and commercial partners.
First, we visited a new building at the west-
ern end of the site, which is being converted
from a veterinary centre to a new visitor’s
centre. After this the tour went around the
large lakes on the eastern side. The lakes are
saltwater and are manually salinated with salt
purchased in large quantities and at a large
expense for the hatchery and stored in large
blue upright tanks.
The dramatic action of the day was the
pumping out of the 25,000 trout into one of
the 0.2ha (half-acre) lined ponds.
Michael from the GCRL held the pump.
With a continually fast rate of pumping, he
Day-tripping
across the Gulf
- 25,000 farmed Sea
Trout on the move and
copepod feed research
by Tom Blacker, International Aquafeed
On Monday 24th February 2015, Tom Blacker of IAF visited two special
scientific research sites for aquaculture. He followed the journey of 25,000
trout from the University of Southern Mississippi’s (USM) Gulf Coast Research
Laboratory – The Thad Cochran Marine Aquaculture Centre’s RAS system
near Gulfport and Biloxi - to the Lyman Fish Hatchery. He reports below on
copepods, trout and more from Mississippi, USA
Leading the tour at the Lyman fish
hatchery was Dr Kelly Lucas, Chief
Scientific Officer of the Mississippi
Department of Marine Resources
The trout transport tank on
the back of a trailer
Tom (right) with a fish
farmer at the reed beds
The hatchery RAS system with the trout
waiting to be moved to the ponds
34 | INTERNATIONAL AQUAFEED | March-April 2015
FEATURE

2. took around 10 minutes to pump all the trout
into the pond when at which point he said
that they will look dizzy or even floating like
they have perished in the process, but they
will all be absolutely fine. Sure enough, visible
fish gradually disappeared towards the centre
of the pond and then down into the darker
water.
In this hatchery’s site there are 14 modern,
purpose-built outdoor pools with a capac-
ity of each being 25-cubic metres and three
much older, manually-dug pools further to the
south of the newer ponds.
The older ponds were the first ponds at
the complex in the 1930s.
Today, one of these older ponds holds
an outdoor crab hatchery. In more recent
times, an indoor crab hatchery was added for
development of the farmed blue crab species
that are held in the RAS tanks here. Blue crabs
can be grown in just nine months and tests in
the R&D stages are experimenting with diets
and solitary living conditions to maximise the
rate of growth.
The current batch that I saw were at the
end of their life and are likely to move on to
be used for other purposes soon.
As bluecrabfarms.com citing William
McLarney shows, the Gulf of Mexico coast-
line is a part of the US that can support all
types of extensive and intensive crab farming.
Marine farming of crabs can be achieved
in theory around this rather wooded and
lagoon-stricken region.
The crabs were in freshwater tanks alone,
apparently because of their carnivorous
behaviour patterns that amused the entire
group!
With that the tour was over and we
all returned to the Aquaculture America
Conference hotel in central New Orleans.
We look forward to hearing more and
keeping in touch with these organisations that
are striving to build an aquaculture ecosystem
for all in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Thad Cochran Marine Aquaculture Centre
Website: http://www.usm.edu/gcrl/cmac
Mississippi Department of Marine Resources
Website: http://www.dmr.ms.gov
Michael from the GCRL pumping
the trout into their new home
Close up of the trout being
pumped from the tank
March-April 2015 | INTERNATIONAL AQUAFEED | 35
FEATURE
Complete Plants and Machines
for the Production of Fish Feed
Contrary to conventional extruders, the KAHL extruder OEE is equipped
with a hydraulically adjustable die.
AMANDUS KAHL GmbH & Co. KG · Dieselstrasse 5-9 · D-21465 Reinbek / Hamburg · Phone: +49 40 727 71 0
info@akahl.de · www.akahl.de