Abstract

Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic organisms and it is the major source of seafood produced globally. The majority of seafood products consumed in the United States, however, are imported from foreign countries. Benjamin J. Reading, Ph.D., and doctoral candidate Linnea K. Andersen share how there is a great window of opportunity to expand the domestic aquaculture industry as a whole to support a reliable and sustainable seafood industry that will help support food security, agricultural development and best environmental practices in the 21st Century.

Reading directs the Pamlico Aquaculture Field Laboratory (Aurora, N.C.) and the Lake Wheeler Field Laboratory Fish Barn (Raleigh, N.C.) for NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Ecology and a university faculty scholar. Reading earned his doctorate in zoology from NC State.

Andersen is a doctoral candidate at NC State and Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) and Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development (AIARD) fellow. Her dissertation research is focused on using machine learning to determine genetic markers for superior aquaculture production traits in two commercially important fish, the striped bass and the hybrid striped bass. Andersen’s professional goals stem from a lifelong appreciation for the outdoors that distinctly took shape during her undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.

TRANSCRIPT

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS

1. Pamlico Aquaculture Field Laboratory (PAFL)

2. Marine Aquaculture Research Center (MARC)

3. Lake Wheeler Fish Barn (LWFB)

4. Grinnell’s Animal Health Laboratories

5. Careers in Mariculture — from North Carolina Sea Grant

6. Oyster Farmer Ryan Bethea (PBS Video)

7. Fish Farms: Aquaculture Industry Thriving in North Carolina’s Backyard (WRAL documentary, summer 2021)