Aquaculture

Existing brood fish research has ascertained that eggs are heavily influenced by broodstock diet but there is no information regarding this timeline of nutritional incorporation. The objective of this study is to determine duration of nutritional incorporation from diet to eggs through fatty acids. Nine California Yellowtail (Seriola dorsalis) broodstock were fed alternating diets of commercial pellets (Vitalis PRIMA: Skretting) and cutbait. Biochemical and biometric data from spawns were collected and analyzed for differences and similarities throughout the alternating diets. Eggs were observed to selectively incorporate higher sources of linolenic and linoleic acid from the pelleted diet, and eicosapentaenoic acid from the cutbait diet. Interestingly, results showed overall fatty acids from both diets were fully incorporated by eggs within 9 days following the diet switch. These findings provided new insight towards the selective incorporation of nutrients and will open new doors for future broodstock nutrition research.

Since 2010, aquaculture practices have produced 70% of global seafood consumption. However, this fast-growing sector of agriculture has yet to see the adoption of advanced technologies to improve farm operations. The Hybrid Aerial Underwater robotiCs System (HAUCS) is an Internet of Things (IoT) framework that aims to bring transformative changes to pond aquaculture.
This project focuses on the latest developments in the HAUCS mobile sensing platform and field deployment. A novel rigid Kirigami-based robotic extension subsystem was created to expand the functionality of the HAUCS platform. The primary objective of this design was to limit the surface area of an extender arm on the drone during flight operations and minimize the in-flight drag. By utilizing a novel combination of shape memory polymer (SMP) and nitinol to extend and retrieve the sensing arm, the structure was able to conserve energy while operating under varying environmental conditions.

Suaeda linearis is an edible halophyte crop with nutraceutical properties that is native to Florida. This study investigated how the biomass production and mineral content of aquacultured S. linearis was affected by harvest frequency during a 10-week period using four different harvest treatments. Under the first treatment (T1) plants received zero intermittent harvests, the second (T2) received harvests every five weeks, the third (T3) received harvests every 3.3 weeks, and the fourth (T4) received harvests every 2.5 weeks. The results indicate that biomass production and mineral content were both strongly affected by harvest treatment. Intermittent harvesting decreased biomass production and conversely, intermittent harvesting increased the quantities of certain desirable minerals in S. linearis. Early harvests of the study plants were small, suggesting that 13-15 weeks after germination is the earliest time a harvestable yield can be achieved from S. linearis.

Evidence that supplementation with prebiotics, probiotics, or combinations of both (synbiotics) enhances the health, growth, and survival of aquacultured teleosts has sparked significant research into their application. This study evaluates the effects of β-glucan and Pediococcus acidilactici synbiotic supplementation in aquacultured Florida pompano (Trachinotus carolinus).
The first study defined embryonic and larval organogenesis. The gastrointestinal tract is differentiated, but not yet fully functional within the first seven days post hatch evidenced by the absence of gastric glands, gastric mucous cells, lipid vacuoles in the anterior intestines, and the persistence of acidophilic supranuclear vesicles. Synbiotics may serve as a source of exogenous digestive enzymes prior to complete gastrointestinal maturation.
The second study investigated hematological, serum biochemical, and protein electrophoretic changes with and without β-glucan and P. acidilactici symbiotic supplementation. Significant decreases in blood urea nitrogen and carbon dioxide concentrations were observed in supplemented Florida pompano compared to controls and may represent enhanced mucosal tissue health, urea excretion, and osmoregulatory function associated with supplementation.

The goal of this project is to gain access to valuable genetic information that will be utilized to create a genetics-based selective breeding program. This selective breeding program will be implemented to produce and maintain a healthy and diverse breeding stock of the Florida Pompano Trachinotus carolinus. The Florida Pompano is a popular food fish found in abundance off Florida's east and west coasts. There has been interest in the aquaculture of this species for decades with minimal success. With recent improvements in aquaculture systems and nutrition, now is the time to bring this fish to commercialization. The main research objectives of this study are to create a bioinformatics workflow to generate a draft whole-genome of the Florida Pompano, identify variation sites within this genome, and run a comparative analysis with two closely related Trachinotus species, Permit T. falcatus and Palometa T. goodei. These two species were chosen because they are found in the same environment as the Florida Pompano but grow to substantially different sizes. To sequence and assemble the whole genome of the Florida Pompano, a hybrid method was applied using long and short-read sequencing technologies. The draft genome was found to be 733.5 Mb in length with a total of 26,891 protein-coding genes. Sites of variation within this assembled genome were identified using a 2b-RAD sequencing method on 62 individuals collected off Florida’s east and gulf coasts.

Marine food chains are highly stressed by aggressive fishing practices and environmental damage. Aquaculture has increasingly become a source of seafood which spares the deleterious impact to wild fisheries, but it requires continuous water quality data to successfully grow and harvest fish. Aerial drones have great potential to monitor large areas quickly and efficiently. The Hybrid Aerial Underwater Robotic System (HAUCS) is a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and underwater measurement devices designed to collect water quality data of aquaculture ponds. The routing of drones to cover each fish pond on an aquaculture farm can be reduced to the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). A dataset is created to simulate the distribution of ponds on a farm and is used to assess the HAUCS Path Planning Algorithm (HPP). Its performance is compared with the Google Linear Optimization Package (GLOP) and a Graph Attention Model (GAM) for routing around the simulated farms. The three methods are then implemented on a team of waterproof drones and experimentally verified at Southern Illinois University’s (SIU) Aquaculture Research Center. GLOP and GAM are demonstrated to be efficient path planning methods for small farms, while HPP is likely to be more suited to large farms. HAUCS shows great value as a future direction for intelligent aquaculture, but issues with obstacle avoidance and robust waterproofing need to be addressed before commercialization. The future of aquaculture promises more integrated and sustainable operations by mimicking natural systems and leveraging deeper understandings of biology.

Florida Pompano Trachinotus carolinus are molluscivorous, greater than 70% of their natural diet consists of hard-shelled gastropods and bivalves. A specialized feeding mechanism (pharyngeal jaw) forms a crushing surface used to grind prey. In aquaculture, extruded pellets are fed and this feeding apparatus results in pellets fracturing and loss of fragments through their gill rakers. The effect of pellet form (hard vs. soft) and size on fractured pellet waste (FPW) and production characteristics of Pompano reared in recirculating aquaculture systems was addressed. No difference in FPW between the standard pellet size and smaller pellet size treatments. However, a difference in FPW at first feeding of the day between the hard and soft pellet treatments was observed, with no difference in FPW present at the last feeding. Results suggest that pellet size does not reduce the amount of FPW produced, while the use of soft pellets reduces the amount of FPW.

The sunray venus (SRV) clam (Macrocallista nimbosa), is an alternative shellfish aquaculture species to hard clams (Mercenaria mercenaria) for Florida. Production of high-quality hatchery seed is dependent on diet. This study was initiated to determine an optimal live microalgae diet and test the efficacy of commercially available microalgae concentrates as partial or complete replacements for live algae. Benefits were seen with multiple algal species combinations. Both clam species achieved highest growth and survival when fed a multi-species quad-algal live diet, although hard clams performed well when fed I. galbana and C. gracilis or I. galbana and P. lutheri. Neither species performed well with complete replacement diets, but showed good production with partial replacement diets. The fatty acid (FA) profile of clams reflected the FA profile of the fed diet. Clams fed multi-species diets of live algae had a well-balanced FA profile consisting of high n3/n6, EPA/DHA and EPA/ARA ratios.