Marine Hatchery and Nursery

           Building Diagram
nursery pic


Marine Hatchery and Nursery Production Facilities

The Marine Hatchery and Nursery Production Facility is currently under construction. The culture practices currently used in the Marine Aquaculture Research Program are described below:

Marine larval fish culture tanks are stocked with fertilized eggs.  These tanks are 8 feet in diameter and contain approximately 871.9 gallons or 3300 liters of seawater per tank.  Once the eggs hatch, the larvae are fed a diet of rotifers.  As the larvae grow, their diet will change to Artemia nauplii and crumble feeds.  Around the time the fish begin accepting a crumble diet, they will begin metamorphosis into young juvenile fish.  The fish are then considered to be in an early juvenile nursery stage.  During the nursery stage, the fish are routinely size graded.  This size grading procedure prevents losses due to cannibalism and competition for food.

As the fish grow, they are moved to either the larger 10 foot nursery/growout tanks or to a nursery/growout raceway.  These tanks provide expanded growing space for larger numbers and sizes of fish. Fish that are produced for stock enhancement research are provided to Mote’s Center for Fisheries Enhancement when they are approximately 5-6 inches (12.7-15.24 cm) in length. These fish are then tagged and used for stock enhancement studies. Growout research is continued with fish that are produced for food.




Marine Larval Experimental Research
The Marine Hatchery and Nursery building also includes both larval production systems and larval experimental systems. The Larval Experiment Research Laboratory is located in a separate room in the hatchery and contains small tanks (26.4 gallons or 100 liters per tank) and associated filtration systems for replicated experimental trials.

exptl pic

Marine Behavioral Research
There is also a separate room in this building designated for marine behavioral experiments.  One of the most common problems in culturing juvenile marine fish is aggressive behavior.  Research is conducted in this facility to determine the cause of this behavior and how to reduce aggressive behavior in culture systems.   Other behavioral studies will investigate acclimation of nursery fish to microhabitat conditions and predator avoidance training prior to release.



                                                           logo                                                         C.A.R.D.
                                                                Back to Mote                                                                        Back to CARD
                                                                   Main Page                                                                              Main Page