Golden Trevally grown at IRREC. Eggs were spawned from broodstock received from SeaWorld Orlando.
The University of Florida’s Indian River Research and Education Center (IRREC) is the latest research facility to join our growing Rising Tide family. Dr. Cortney Ohs heads up the Aquaculture Research and Demonstration Facility at IRREC and has made leaps and bounds in the realms of marine baitfish, marine live feeds, and brood nutrition research since joining UF in 2005. His expertise and expansive facility will greatly enhance the progress desired in the world of marine ornamental fish research.
About a year ago, Cortney began his involvement with a shipment of golden trevally broodstock from SeaWorld Orlando. He has since raised 1000’s of them to the juvenile phase, the details of which will be presented in a future blog post. More recently he has acquired funding that will bring green chromis broodstock to his facility so he and his team can begin to address the production protocols required to make this heavily imported species an aquaculture reality. TAL and IRREC will be working together closely on this species as well as the Pacific blue tang. Cortney is currently working on getting Pacific blue tang broodstock so we can double our research efforts and continue to understand the parameters necessary to make this fish a captive bred species as well. In addition, he will also be receiving shipments of eggs from public aquariums, targeting specific species of interest.
I am personally excited to have Cortney added to the expanding list of Rising Tide research facilities as I obtained my master’s degree studying in his lab. Try not to hold that against him though, as he did the best he could J. It is truly an exciting time for Rising Tide as it continues to grow and the separate teams continue to work together, propelling the research forward.
Eric Cassiano and the Rising Tide team at TAL
