DUNN'S FISH FARMS, INC. — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase II: 8.7

Description

Our goal is to commercialize the largemouth bass fingerling production system/strategy that was proven effective through our Phase 1 project. This system employs "out-of-season" fall spawning followed by winter feed-training and the on-growing of advanced fingerlings indoors. In Phase 1 we developed broodstock acclimation facilities and protocols for out-of-season spawning in raceways. We showed that broodstock conditioned in our recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) outperformed those conditioned in existing flow-through raceways. We also developed a RAS for culturing fingerlings during the winter months and documented the improved growth and economics. An in-depth analysis showed improved economic feasibility of this new strategy over traditional fingerling production methods. We are now ready to implement this strategy on a commercial scale. Our first objective will be to purchase and install the appropriate RAS components to meet at least 50% of our overall fingerling production goals. Other objectives include: improving brooder acclimation, completing an in-depth economic analysis, and generating bi-lingual staff training materials and SOPs for bass fingerling culture in RAS. Full scale commercialization of this production system/strategy will decrease the time and pond space required to produce fingerling bass, improve fingerling production economics, and would subsequently free up more pond space for the production of food-sized largemouth bass. The proposed project would significantly improve our overall farm production efficiency and is necessary to increase the overall sustainability of largemouth bass food fish production.