I saw this article in today's Times Union and then found it posted on The Washington Post website:
Mass-Producing Nemo: A Peek At U-Md.'s Clownfish Technique
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 12, 2006; Page T03
CAMBRIDGE, Md. -- Under ideal conditions, a single clownfish can lay enough eggs to produce more than 500 minuscule, wriggling hatchlings.
So when researchers at a University of Maryland lab started breeding clownfish in captivity, it was easy to see that they were not creating ideal conditions. Their first six-plus months of effort, funded by thousands in federal grant money, produced two juvenile fish.
Above, Andrew Lazur, a scientist working on the clownfish breeding program, collects food for the young fish. A clownfish smaller than a poker chip can sell for $6. Their popularity is a peril for the wild population, researchers say.
"Those fish were probably worth about $10,000 apiece," given all the time and money spent to produce them, joked Andrew M. Lazur, a professor at the Horn Point Laboratory on the Eastern Shore, part of the university's Center for Environmental Science.
More than a year later, any visitor can see that things have improved. Experiments to mass-produce large and vividly colored clownfish (star of the animated film "Finding Nemo") have produced a laboratory full of thousands of orange and white Nemo look-alikes. The researchers are scheduled to share some of what they've learned with would-be fish farmers at an open house Saturday.
Clownfish are among the most popular species of aquarium fish in the world. A United Nations report found that at least 145,000 of them were traded internationally between 1997 and 2002. And that was before the 2003 release of "Finding Nemo," a father-and-son clownfish adventure that increased interest in the fish worldwide.
Environmentalists say the popularity is a serious danger for the fish, which live among anemones in the waters near Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
Though half of the clownfish bought in the United States are raised in captivity (a higher percentage than for other tropical aquarium fish), half are still plucked from the wild, according to John Brandt, North America director for the
Marine Aquarium Council. His group sets international standards for the collection and trade of ornamental fish.
Conserving wild fish is one reason researchers at the University of Maryland, along with scientists at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, are trying to perfect techniques for raising clownfish in captivity.
The scientists say they're trying to streamline and improve the process and make it more accessible for small-scale operations.
Since a clownfish smaller than a poker chip can bring $6 or more wholesale, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has given the two institutions more than $150,000 in grants to find ways to make raising the fish easier.
At the Horn Point lab, the first job was raising the fish. At first, the clownfish there would lay eggs, but the eggs often wouldn't hatch. That was solved by making the parent fish's diet more nutritious and changing the temperature and type of salt in the water. Now, often more than 75 percent of the young survive, researchers say.
One lesson they already knew: Clownfish are good at protecting eggs but terrible at parenting. After the eggs are laid on a terra cotta floor tile in the tank, the male clownfish guard them constantly, swishing water past them to provide oxygen.
But then, when the young hatch, the parents often eat them.
"They don't know them from food," said William Van Heukelem, a research scientist working with Lazur. "In the coral reef, [the young would] be swept away from the area," and the parents would be done with them, he said. The problem can be solved by moving the eggs out of the parents' tank before they hatch.
Another problem for the researchers was color. Clownfish that are fed regular fish food often turn the color of a yellow highlighter. But customers don't want yellow clownfish, so researchers experimented with their food, adding a natural pigment found in plankton.
The result: a perfect Nemo orange.
"That's pretty ideal right there," said Lazur, standing in his lab one recent day and pointing at a tank that held more than $1,000 worth of tiny clownfish. "That's an attractive fish."
The public will be able to see the fish and meet the researchers from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the lab, which is on the Choptank River outside of Cambridge. The open house will include tours of oyster, sturgeon and rockfish laboratories, as well as hayrides and face painting. More information is available at
http://www.hpl.umces.edu/openhouse/index.htm .
