Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

1) Marketing, Niches and New Products: Improve the development of seafood markets by focusing on analyses of new marketing themes, market niches, and alternative seafood products

1. A project that examined the overall ‘seascape’ of seafood certifications using the evolution of Theory of Change over the entire supply chain was completed. The study outlined four possible next phases of this seascape ranging from race to the bottom (certification standards converging to the least rigorous standard – least preferred outcome) to emergence of a new entity the project called sustainable seafood aggregator (SSA). A paper based on this study was recently accepted for publication. This was a collaborative work with Hiro Uchida (URI), Cathy Roheim (U of ID), Simon Bush (Wageningen Univ., The Netherlands), Jim Sanchirico (UC Davis), and Frank Asche (UF).
2. Above project also motivated and produced a PhD dissertation, that resulted in two conference presentations and two papers in preparation. First paper that examined and compared the presence of price premiums for sustainable seafood and perceived food safety in Chinese market using online merchants data; this was presented at NAAFE 2017 conference. The second paper is also on the consumers demand for sustainable seafood but uses economic experimental auction method to investigate further into the details of how the demand in Chinese seafood market is formed. This paper will be presented at IIFET 2018. The student, Chao Zou at URI, has successfully defended his dissertation and now works at NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
3. Conducted and completed the experimental auction sessions investigating the change in consumers’ demand for farmed oysters when an outbreak of food-borne disease occurs. The project focused on the market negative spillover effect (disease outbreak in farm A affecting the sales of neighboring farm B through market) and how oyster farmers may be able to proactively mitigate such effect. This was a collaborative work among the different branches of social science at URI, and trained two graduate students from different disciplines.
4. Recently began a study, with a PhD student at URI, on the consumers’ demand for genetically modified farmed seafood. This was motivated by the FDA approval of GM salmon by the company based in MA, but also incorporates the effect of varying degree of GM-ness such as farmed seafood fed with GM grain-based feed.
5. A current project involves a survey of Connecticut residents’ interest in and demand for Connecticut aquaculture products—specifically, oysters, clams, and seaweed. The survey involves a choice experiment and participants were given various information treatments about the health/nutrition and environmental benefits of (local) aquaculture. The survey launched in November 2017. This is collaborative work with Tessa Getchis and Anoushka Concepcion from Connecticut Sea Grant and Miriah Kelly from UConn Extension. External grants cover parts of the work, including supervision of an MS student. Findings will be submitted to Agricultural and Resource Economics Review later this year and presented at the 2019 IIFET, AERE, and/or NAREA meetings next year.
6. Guam has unique geographic and strategic advantages because of its close proximity to Asia, the center of world aquaculture production. Guam also plays a pivotal role economically among the surrounding islands in Micronesia, which is distinguished among the Western Pacific region for leading the island sustainable development for food security. The major aquaculture species cultured on Guam remain as Tilapia, milkfish and shrimp, and their production levels have not been clearly monitored and recorded in the recent years, with little public data accessible. And there is no regulatory government agency being specifically assigned to watch over and guide the aquaculture development section on Guam, even the data collection and data tracking are lacking. However, the needs and interests of aquaculture development are still present in the community, mostly due to the strong local demand for high quality seafood products in the market. Hui Jiang and staff from University of Guam focus on establishing the baseline information of local aquaculture products and their market via survey on Guam, by adopting Fishery Performance Index (FPI) or other established systemic platform to develop the questionnaire, and collect the data via interview.
7. Lionfish are an invasive species in the U.S. that are adversely affecting reef systems and associated food webs, with implications for commercial and local subsistence fisheries in the Southeast U.S. and U.S. Virgin Islands. This study, funded by NOAA’s Saltonstall Kennedy program, brought together economists, anthropologists and political scientists (from UF, Emory and Georgia Southern) – and in cooperation with the Experiment Station in the USVI - to address the potential for a market for lionfish from the social science perspective. Consumers and producers were interviewed for both their WTP and WTA values, respectively, for lionfish meat. Preliminary analysis shows that while an official commercial fishery is not likely to be established under current federal law, both the supply and demand seem sufficient to support a sustained market. Significant outreach was conducted in order to help develop the market including teaching fishermen how to catch, handle and fillet lionfish and conveying to consumers that lionfish cooks the same as other fish and may taste and handle even better.
8. In Indiana, one study led by Dr. Quagrainie sought to explore expanded market opportunities in the local food systems for the aquaculture industry to stimulate market-driven production, particularly for small- to medium-scale producers who have traditionally relied on the live ethnic markets. Another study compared the economics of aquaponics production of fish and vegetables versus hydroponics production of only vegetables. The study compared investment and operating costs that included the production of the vegetables under organic system of production.

2) Production for Dynamic Markets: Enhance fishery and aquaculture production by developing decision support tools to integrate management and marketing

1. An aquaponic research project involving aquaculture, economics, horticulture, biosystems engineering and poultry science (pathogen detection) was funded by USDA-NIFA. The project interdisciplinary nature is filling knowledge gaps in the tilapia-vegetable-algae system. In areas away from population centers, finding markets for large-scale quantities of co-products is challenging and needs further work.
2. An in-pond raceway system is being developed and research trials conducted to improve catfish production efficiencies, cost reduction, ease of operation and reducing bird depredation. These systems are being adopted in SE Asia but finds far less acceptance in the US catfish producing regions.
3. Excel spreadsheets for the above two projects are being developed into production decision products to help entrepreneurs in their investment decision-making.
4. Several studies toward identifying and reducing off-flavors and yellow color producing compounds in channel catfish have resulted in FDA approved washes that work to reduce many odors but not all, making the process less acceptable to processors desiring 100 percent elimination. 
5. Several studies toward replacing fish meal feed ingredients with amino acid enriched soybean meals has proven acceptance by fish and reduces feed costs.  Studies have also used squid hydrolysate and squid meal supplemented with enzymes to improve acceptance of soy-based marine diets for Florida pompano.
6. A shrimp study comparing four feeding methods showed significantly better growth and net returns came from the technique using microphones that detected shrimp feeding noises and continued feeding until they stopped. This technique resulted in much greater quantities of larger, high-valued shrimp than from the manual feeding treatments (2) and timed feeder applications.
7. One study found organic and inorganic micronutrient pre-mix mineral packets mixed into all-plant tilapia diets did not result in any growth, survival or body composition differences, except organic selenium diets did have more in the tilapia flesh than from the inorganic selenium diets.
8. A hybrid catfish study found certain factors increased growth variability resulting in more large, less-valued catfish in a production cycle. Enterprise budget analysis showed that split pond systems had greater economic benefits than traditional systems (single and multiple-batch) and in-pond raceway systems. Best management practices (BMP) developed from this study included using ungraded hybrid fingerlings and average stocking densities (15-20,000 fingerlings/ha) because they provided the highest net returns. The most economically profitable BMP for split pond users was to use the large-sized graded fingerling with intensified stocking (40-80,000 fingerlings/ha) and feeding at a high rate (50-80,000 kg/ha).
9. Another study being conducted in commercial catfish ponds is investigating vaccine development to reduce annual losses of 7 million pound of fish to bacterial diseases. We are evaluating a trivalent vaccine to counter the virulent Aeromonas hydrophila, enteric septicemia of catfish and columnaris. Thus, no disease outbreaks have occurred in the commercial ponds so the vaccines have not yet been challenged.
10. Dr. Mount (Clemson) hypothesized that the development of a conopeptide-based antifouling system could provide a non-toxic, stable, and effective deterrent to biofouling on aquaculture nets and gear. Dr. Mount in collaboration with Engineered Marine Coatings Inc. of Charleston, South Carolina obtained Phase 1 STTR funding from the National Science Foundation (2017-18; $227k). The project developed and tested a novel conopeptide based coating based on the lab’s patent pending technology. The synthetic conopeptide antifoulant, Miata57, invented by Dr. Mount was designed to be covalently linked to a surface. It has shown a promising ability to deter fouling marine invertebrate larvae from settling, thus preventing biofouling when it is included as part of a coating. The project also successfully innovated an alkyne rich reactive coating that effectively conjugates Miata57 in various quantities to demonstrate its high effectiveness as an antifouling surface, which was tested by the company on glass bead substrates. The cyprid bioassay results revealed that conjugated Miata57 is highly effective in defeating cyprid biofouling at a much lower density than previously hypothesized. This discovery sharply reduces the cost of the final formulations, necessary for subsequent testing. Once perfected, the Miata57 conjugated coating can be added to any number of commercial antifouling marine products thus obviating the need for a copper based marine antifouling paint. It can also be directly conjugated to films and fibers which would benefit finfish production for the aquaculture industry. In September, 2018 the Mount laboratory has recently received additional funding from the South Carolina Research Authority to begin limited field testing of the Miata57 coatings in the marine environment.

3) Regulatory Influences on Sector Development: Increase the organizational and institutional efficiency of the aquaculture and fishery sectors by analyzing the regulatory environment and developing ideas to support the sectors

1. Portfolio selection is a flexible tool that can be used to support natural resource decision-making to optimize provision of ecosystem services. The natural resource portfolio literature includes applications in fisheries, forestry, agriculture, spatial planning, invasive pest and disease surveillance, climate change adaptation, and biodiversity conservation, among others. We contribute to this growing literature by proposing a set of essential questions to guide the development and implementation of empirical portfolios for natural resource management that deal with (1) the nature and objectives of the portfolio manager, (2) the definition of assets to be included in the portfolio, (3) the way in which returns and risk are measured and distributed, and (4) the definition of constraints in the programming problem. The approach is illustrated using landings data from the Colombian Pacific, a data limited fishery, to set catch limits in fisheries at the ecosystem level. We also develop a set of constraints in the programming problem to simulate potential policy options regarding resource sustainability and social equity. The resulting efficient catch portfolios can be used to optimize the flow of provisioning ecosystem services from this fishery (Alvarez, Larkin and Ropicki, 2017).

4) Assessing Infrastructure and Industry Organization: Improve the understanding of how infrastructure investment, location, and sector organization affects the stability of both the aquaculture and capture fishery industries.

1. The U.S. commercial red snapper IFQ program was the first catch share management system implemented in the Gulf of Mexico. The program has been successful in meeting its major goals of ending derby-style fishing and reducing overcapacity in the harvest sector, but several concerns regarding the socioeconomic impacts of the program have been raised. To address these concerns, the management agency initiated a fishery management plan amendment to develop potential modifications to the program. This analysis describes the proposed policy changes, identifies the key outcomes, and assesses the impacts on distinct participant types using historic harvest data, quota trading patterns, and existing estimates of industry concentration. There are three implied regulatory objectives, as all proposed modifications would either increase ownership of shares by harvesters, limit consolidation in the harvest sector, or increase harvest flexibility. The corresponding effects on stakeholders could vary quite substantially as each objective and the associated alternative policies would affect the size and composition of multiple markets that collectively affect socioeconomic outcomes. The approach to evaluating existing catch share programs and the associated findings in this paper are important for management agencies charged with adhering to federal policies and guidance concerning distributional outcomes (Ropicki, Willard and Larkin, 2018).