BARNSTABLE, Mass. — November 24, 2012 — Wayne and Barbara Miller's trout farm on Meetinghouse Way attracts a lot of attention from Cooper's hawks, otters and a troupe of other wild creatures looking for a free meal. Most people on Cape Cod, however, don't even know it exists.
The nearly nine-acre Blue Stream farm is spring-fed by 700 to 800 gallons of water per minute that pour into a series of ponds, runs and a hatch house where the Millers grow brown, brook, rainbow and tiger trout for sale to private ponds, fish derbies and science.
The Millers consider their work retirement and don't compete with densely packed farms in places like Idaho, which provides most of the country's trout raised for food.
The farm's clean water and low densities have drawn biologist Erin Bromage from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
"Everywhere else you have to vaccinate your fish," Bromage said during a recent visit to the Millers' farm. "You don't have to do that here."
While the largest Idaho farm produces 24 million fish a year, or 50,000 pounds of fish a day, the Millers produce 30,000 fish or 8,000 to 10,000 pounds of fish a year.
As aquaculture fills an increasing role in feeding the world, researchers such as Bromage — whose accent and easy nature betray his Australian roots — are trying to solve the problem of disease in farm-raised fish and answer a host of other scientific questions about life on the farm.
Using the "pristine" fish from Blue Stream, Bromage can test vaccines, study how the immune system of fish has evolved and how they differ from humans, he said. "If we can get more fish through the farming cycle, we can get a cheaper fish finger," Bromage said, quoting one of his graduate students.
Bromage was recently awarded the National Science Foundation's CAREER award and one of his Ph.D. students — Katherine Rego — received the National Institute of Food and Agricultural Doctoral Fellowship. The total of the two awards is about $1 million, Bromage said, adding that he has received $1.7 million in additional grants over the past five years for his work to study how to keep farmed fish healthier and reduce losses to disease.
That funding has allowed nine graduate students, 25 undergraduate students and three high school students to participate in research that will have widespread implications and prepare them for their future careers, Bromage said.
Read the full story at New Bedford Standard Times