February 15-18, 2009 Washington State Convention Center Seattle ...

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ACOUSTIC CONDITIONING AND OCEAN RANCHING OF BLACK SEA BASS Centropristis
striata NEAR WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS
Scott Lindell*, Simon V. Miner, Clifford A. Goudey, Steve Page, Hauke Kite-Powell and John Murt
Scientific Aquaculture Program
Marine Biological Laboratory
7 MBL St.
Woods Hole, MA 02543 USA
slindell@mbl.edu
Acoustic ranching consists of training fish to school to an area via a sound stimulus that is coupled with a food reward (classical
Pavlovian conditioning). It may present a novel opportunity to raise fish with less environmental impact and at less expense than
typical open-ocean fish farms. Some advantages include (i) lower capital costs to construct and install a feeding and recapture
station (versus a cage engineered to withstand open ocean conditions), (ii) lower operating costs associated with maintaining
a feeding station, (iii) lower feed costs because fish have opportunities to forage on wild food as well as formulated diets, (iv)
lower potential impact on the environment due to natural dispersion of fish and their wastes, and (v) the technology could aid
stock replenishment efforts by gently weaning hatchery-raised fish from pelletted diets to fending for themselves in the wild.
This project presents the first attempt to farm marine fish with acoustic ranching in North America. Black sea bass (Centropristis
striataa) are a popular commercial and recreational fishery that has declined significantly in past decades. We purchased
7,000 one gram black sea bass juveniles from Great Bay Aquaculture in September 2007. In June 2008 we erected and installed
an AquaDome TM , a 10 m (32’) wide by 5 m (16’ high geodesic dome covered with a 1-inch, plastic-coated wire mesh, on the
sandy seafloor in Buzzards Bay near Woods Hole Massachusetts. The site was selected for its proximity to a natural rocky
outcropping that makes ideal juvenile fish habitat. The AquaDome was fitted with a 7.5 cm (3”) feeding tube, an underwater
speaker and underwater cameras to monitor and record fish behavior at sound generation and feeding events. Approximately
5,000 tagged black sea bass were stocked into the AquaDome in July 2008. The fish were trained in the cage by feeding them
twice a day in tandem with a sound cue (a 320 Hz tone) (a 320 Hz tone). Once the training was completed, some of the one-inch
mesh on the AquaDome was replaced with 10 cm (4”) mesh so that the fish could swim out and set up residency on the nearby
rocky bottom. The fish were able to swim back in during sound cue and feeding events.
Based on laboratory experiments we conducted with juvenile black sea bass over the winter and spring of 2008, it takes about
4 weeks to properly train a group of fish to consistently respond to a sound cue and move to a prescribed area in anticipation
of receiving a food reward. We have also documented that black sea bass are very elastic in their diet and can switch between
eating pellets and wild forage quite readily. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that once the learned behavior of responding
to the sound cue has been mastered it is can be consolidated in the fish’s memory for at least 4 weeks.
We will present results of our laboratory and field trials and our efforts to recapture the majority of these fish, evaluate their
growth and measure the potential economic advantages of this method of fish production.