Aquariums and aquaculture: perfect fit for education, rehabilitation

Senior Biologist and Certified Fisheries Professional
Fisheries Technology Associates, Inc.

What is the most popular pet in America? The cat? Sorry. How about the dog? Wrong again. Many people are surprised to hear that more fish occupy more households than dogs or cats. In many Asian nations, aquariums are considered standard office furniture, and are as mandatory as desks and chairs.

When you think about it though, during our childhoods almost all of us had or knew someone with an aquarium. Mine was small and required very little maintenance. Like many people, I was attracted to the colorful and unusually shaped tropical varieties, and marveled at their obvious diversity. Parents appreciate aquariums too. How often do you hear a mother complaining that she had to walk the fish for her forgetful son or daughter?

Aquariums are natural learning tools. School administrators and teachers recognize this fact and often include aquariums as part of the classroom setting. They can be used to augment a broad array of lessons in the sciences including fluid statics and dynamics, light reflection and refraction, chemistry of solvents and solutes, acid/base balance, social behavior, reproductive biology, and a myriad of other concepts in physics, chemistry, and biology. Whether you know it or not, you are a practitioner of most, if not all, of the scientific disciplines. Why, then, can’t aquariums be used to teach aquaculture?

On a small scale, aquariums contain all of the elements of larger-sized water recirculation fish production systems: (1) fibers and other media or methods to capture solids, (2) gravel, plastic, or ion-exchange substrates to capture and convert ammonia to nitrate, and (3) pumps and diffusers to move water through the system as critical gases are exchanged with the atmosphere.

More sophisticated aquarium systems incorporate other steps. Many of the same processes that occur in the aquarium take place on a grander scale in aquaculture systems—ponds and raceway systems included—water recirculation technology and systems in particular.

You might ask, "Why place emphasis on water recirculation technology?" Given the regulatory climate that exists today and is likely to exist in the future, as well as the demands placed on valuable resources such as water, land-based aquaculture will expand domestically only if water reuse and water recirculation technologies are effectively conceived, designed, built, and managed. Each of these tasks will require well trained and intuitively bright aquaculturists with intimate knowledge and appreciation of the details of their profession. Otherwise known as wisdom, this knowledge and appreciation only can be obtained through appropriate experience.

So, the sooner we can reach young students and expose them in direct and indirect ways to the principles of aquaculture production, the better off the industry will be. At the very least, we will be educating future consumers of aquacultured products to the advantages of eating aquatic foods produced in controlled environments.

It’s no coincidence as well that today there is an explosion of interest and development of small-scale fish production systems at county, state, and federal correctional institutions. These programs provide education, job training, and experience and instill purpose and meaning to an otherwise drab existence—a phenomenon with the side benefits of not only preparing an inmate for release, but instilling a sense of ownership and self-esteem. Importantly, the products of these systems also help defray the costs of housing inmates. Correctional institutions have embraced aquaculture for these and other important reasons. In fact, not only are aquaculture systems operated at correctional institutions, system components such as tanks are built at some as well.

We all caught the "aquaculture bug." That’s why we do what we do. For me there has always been something very compelling about aquaculture. You probably feel that too. Aquaculture seems to have that effect on people. Whether you’re an inmate in need of a second chance, or a young student wondering what to do with your life, aquaculture can provide that "light bulb moment" when they too catch the bug.

The future of our industry depends on the level of education that our kids receive today. To many (me included), that is a frightening prospect, particularly in light of the fact that aquaculture curriculums or concepts are being taught at only a handful of high school facilities. For that matter, some high school curriculums are completely inadequate to prepare students for any career in science.

Given the enormous pressures on public and private school systems and other institutions to do more with less, it seems reasonable to suggest that inexpensive and ubiquitous educational tools such as aquariums and small-scale aquaculture systems be used more often within the context of providing a well-rounded education in the sciences, with a side benefit of providing a perfect opportunity to expose students and others to the world of controlled-environment fish production.

Encourage the development of an aquaculture curriculum in your school district and expose our future aquaculturists to the industry at an early age.