Echinoderms, including sea urchins and sea cucumbers, offer a unique window into the evolution of innate immunity. Their immune systems operate without the classical adaptive components seen in ...
Aquaculture is the farming in fresh and saltwater environments of aquatic animals or plants principally for food. Fish, mollusks, crustaceans, and kelp are a few examples.
Shellfish -like scallops, oysters, mussels, and crabs-are essential to healthy ocean ecosystems and coastal economies. They filter water, support marine food webs, and provide livelihoods for thousands of people through fisheries and aquaculture. But shellfish face growing threats from climate change, pollution, and human activity. Researchers are investigating how warmer, more acidic oceans ...
Farming the ocean has several benefits, according to WHOI aquaculture research specialist Scott Lindell. The ocean is a vastly underutilized space; farming there could free up land for other uses—growing crops for food rather than biofuels, for example. Aquaculture also provides environmental benefits.
Harmful algal blooms are natural and they are not new. But ocean scientists are growing concerned that they are now all too common. The unprecedented growth of human activities in coastal watersheds—including agriculture, aquaculture, industry, housing, and recreation—has drastically increased the amount of fertilizer flowing into coastal waters and fueled unwanted algal growth.
A diver harvests kelp at an offshore aquaculture farm. WHOI researchers are developing techniques to expand kelp cultivation, which has the potential to provide low-impact nutrition, renewable energy, and carbon storage.
Aquaculture ponds and cage culture systems rep-resent another source of nutrients, provided as feed or fertilizer and by the biological transfor-mations occurring in these high biomass systems.
WHOI Sea Grant supports $1.6 million in critical aquaculture and fisheries research Over the next two years, these projects will generate new tools and data to support species economically and environmentally important to coastal Massachusetts.