![]() Darling Marine Center at the University of Maine In a word, the sterile triploid was going to be created because it made irrefutably marketing sense. Another benefit in a faster growing oyster was that it could reach market size before being vulnerable to particular types of parasites like the one causing Dermo disease ( Perkinsus marinus). Instead of utilising its sugar reserves of glucose and glycogen for gamete production, and reducing its meat content by as much as 70%, the sterile oyster, it was thought, could be freed to harness this energy for meat and shell growth, thus reducing the time to cultivate a marketable oyster. ![]() The idea of growing brood stock in hatcheries was not new but producing a sterile oyster was, one that would be denied nature’s most basic function, reproduction, so that meat content, flavour and texture could be improved. It was important to find ways to make fish grow more quickly in the colder waters, to overcome the problems of erratic spawning at such low temperatures and to make more money by producing shellfish for consumption the whole year round. Darling Marine Center, overlooking the Damariscotta River, on the Maine coast in North Eastern America, where in 1979 marine biologists at the University of Maine were working on methods to help improve the local shellfish industry. The narrative begins in a wooded, hilltop research centre, now the Ira C. So this was the scene when a young and ambitious student set about trying to create a hybrid oyster, one which had never existed in nature. The first commercial oyster seed hatchery opened on the US west coast in 1967, but like most hatcheries was beset with various biological problems. Selective breeding and artificial rearing of oyster spat in hatcheries were seen as ways to compensate for the disappearance of wild stocks and unpredictability of spawning in colder climates by providing an almost limitless source of spat for cultivation. But most of the work only got off the ground after the 2 nd World War. The first experimental hatcheries on a larger scale were started in the 1930’s, in Conwy, Wales (UK) under first Herbert Cole (1911-1984) and later Peter Walne (1926-1978) and in Milford, Connecticut (US) under Victor Loosanoff (1899-1987). But science was generally slow to latch on. His was the age of the first hatcheries which were established to study and allow fish spawn in artificial environments. One of its pioneers, known in France as le père de la pisciculture, Victor Coste (1807-1873) was originally professor of embryology, and was instrumental in spreading interest in the methods of artificial collection of wild spat from oysters. ![]() ![]() Right from the beginning, science has endeavoured to involve itself in aquaculture. Aquaculture was seen as a way to buy good publicity and acquire a brand as a caring company. However, not all aquaculture is sustainable, and in a recent book by Colin Nash, The History of Aquaculture (2011), a pile of evidence is amassed of the unsavoury involvement of the nuclear power industry and multinational chemical conglomerates like Union Carbide, Dow Chemical and Sun Oil in aquaculture during the 1960/70’s which had devastating consequences for the marine environment. Aquaculture is seen as an economic and environmental necessity to safeguard the finite resources of the seas. Stocks have fallen dramatically and fishing has now become far more regulated. Nowadays, the tragedy of all this naivety, on the one hand and greed, on the other, is only too apparent. Apart from France, most countries failed to introduce any viable system of regulation until it was too late. To be fair to Huxley, towards the end of his life, his tone changed, as he became more convinced that management of oyster beds needed to be introduced and recognised the dangers inherent in certain practices. In his opinion, the bounties of the oceans were considered inexhaustible and nature left to its own devices, in the true spirit of free trade and liberalism, was almost infinitely resilient and could adapt to any pressure imposed by man so that the idea of any threat of overfishing was totally rejected. Long ago were the halcyon days of seas, brimming with all kinds of fish and molluscs, and laissez-faire politics that shunned any form of regulation on fishing, best exemplified by the opinions of one of the intellectual giants of the 19 th century, Thomas Huxley, an autodidactic natural scientist, who dubbed himself “Darwin’s bulldog” because of his staunch defence of the latter’s controversial ideas, and who fathered a long line of Huxley geniuses.
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