Aquaculture

Scott and Donna McCardell saw a chance to get in on an industry of the future.In rural Cecil County, where farming often means cattle or corn, the husband-and-wife team set out to raise fish. And when they joined forces with a longtime leader in the business -- the chairman of the state's advisory panel on aquaculture, no less -- they confidently bet virtually everything they owned on the venture."It wasn't going to make us rich," said Donna McCardell, "but it was going to be a nice, comfortable living."

Students from South Carroll High School have approval to design and construct the only student exhibit at Columbus Center, the $147 million marine biotechnology complex at the Inner Harbor.Robert Foor-Hogue's science research classes have been working for more than a year on a proposal after an invitation from J. Adam Frederick, marine education specialist at the center.Frederick, a former high school science teacher in Frederick County, knew of Foor-Hogue's pioneering use of aquaculture -- raising fish -- as a medium for teaching scientific research.

PRINCESS ANNE -- Tony Mazzaccaro last week peered through a microscope lens, searching for an elusive killer. "I just don't see it," he said. "Looks like I won't have to nuke the pond after all."This time.Mazzaccaro, owner of the Hyrock fish farm by the Manokin River in Somerset County, was looking for a microorganism that might have been responsible for killing 8,000 of his hybrid striped bass in early August. A year earlier, a microbe may have killed 23,000 of his farm's adult bass.Both times, he had to "nuke" several of his fish ponds -- treat them with chemicals to clean them of harmful organisms.

DIEN BIEN PHU, Vietnam -- Hoang Thi Mai, a sweet-faced mother of four, removes her rubber thongs and slips fully clothed into a large pond twice a week to do battle for a slippery, wiggling tilapia, a fish native to Africa with the delicate taste of flounder. It will be supper for her extended family of eight in a single-room home of mud and thatch in Vietnam's verdant northern mountains.More than a meal, the fat black fish also symbolizes the first step in a solution to one of the globe's most enduring problems.

Brandon Dawson's science project slipped through his fingers and swam away in the cool, clean waters of Morgan Run.Aquaculture is catching on fast in Maryland schools. At least 26 high schools in the state teach the raising of fish as a form of farming.But more teachers are learning to use fish as a medium for science classes -- from elementary to college-preparatory research courses such as the one Brandon, 17, took at South Carroll High School."With aquaculture, you can do all aspects of science," said Robert Foor-Hogue, the science teacher at South Carroll who has pioneered using fish in class.

Don't mess with oceans to produce more fishOne need not be an environmental Cassandra to quiver with fear after reading Dennis T. Avery's recent suggestion that the time is ripe to manipulate the oceans to produce more fish. His commentary (April 4, ''Should we fertilize the oceans for fishing?") relates to recent experiments in which the introduction of a half-ton of iron into the ocean resulted in a forty-fold increase in production over a 200-square-mile area.He proposes the application of iron to ''renew the oceans' abundance.

POCOMOKE CITY -- At first glance, Aquamar Industries looks pretty unassuming -- just a couple of big gray sheds in a clearing off Route 113 in Worcester County.But those gray sheds house the leading edge of aquaculture in Maryland -- 130,000 or so tilapia, a fish with a funny name, a biblical past and a future so promising that it's been dubbed "the broiler chicken of the fish industry."Tilapia, virtually unknown in Maryland five years ago, are now the fastest growing segment of the state's $20 million-a-year aquaculture industry.

Watermen's trade showLearn about Maryland's proposed oyster restoration plan, blue crab industry, drift gill-netting and Chesapeake Bay aquaculture at the 23rd Annual East Coast Commercial Fishermen's and Aquaculture Trade Expo this weekend at the Wicomico Civic Center in Salisbury.The three-day event sponsored by the Maryland Watermen's Association will showcase the latest in products and services and include seminars for watermen, marine industry employees, potential aquaculturists and the general public.

Andrew Gillis is banking on the fish industry and has made the investment to prove it -- about 3,400 native striped bass he hopes to sell to area restaurants."

These days, there's more to a school science experiment than growing beans in a cup of potting soil or studying the habits of goldfish.For science research students at South Carroll High School, experiments mean simulating life cycles within the confines of a mini-warehouse and using computers to develop and operate systems that support and preserve aquatic and plant life."