West Virginia Universitys aquaculture project received international recognition at this years meeting of the World Aquaculture Society in Florence, Italy.
Dan Miller, research associate with the Aquaculture Product and Market Development Project, won the poster competition at AQUA 2006 with his entry profiling a project integrating aquaculture as a post-mining land use.
The project began in 2004 when Eastern Coal Company approached the aquaculture program to explore the feasibility farming trout at a site known as Robinhood.
Our process in cases like these is to go in, analyze the site, check the water quality, and see if the available mine water can support fish,Miller said.
The Eastern site, an underground mine site in Boone County that needed to be reclaimed, had excellent water quality but lower water flow (approximately 250 gallons per minute) than WVU s aquaculture specialists generally recommend. Miller guided Eastern through the development of a plastic raceway system for fish farming. Today, trout are raised outside the mine where the water flows out of the mine portal using gravity, not pumps.
The fish have turned out to be very healthy and well-developed,Miller said.
Eastern has been able to lease the site to a Harrison County fish farm owner who was looking to expand his operations, and create part-time employment opportunities. One of the most exciting outcomes of this project was that Eastern saved roughly $450,000 in reclamation costs.
Theyve made the land more productive than it was prior to mining, and draw extra income from the leasing of the land while creating opportunities for other entrepreneurs,he added.
There are several other former mine sites currently producing fish in West Virginia. Most of the hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish produced annually go to processing for food, but the rest go to the recreation industry to stock streams, lakes and ponds.
WVU s aquaculture program isnt finished with the Eastern site. It has received $74,000 from the Northeast Regional Aquaculture Center to do a cost-effectiveness study on plastic raceways in comparison to conventional concrete raceways. Eastern will match the support in the form of site improvements.
The aquaculture program at WVU is a multidisciplinary effort with WVU Extension Service and faculty from the Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences, College of Business and Economics and College of Engineering and Mineral Resources.
Genesis for WVU s aquaculture project can be attributed to the vision and leadership provided by Sen. Robert C. Byrd through the U.S. Dept. of Agricultures Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service.
The post-mining land use projects are only one aspect of WVU s aquaculture initiative. Researchers also examine the marketing of aquaculture products, examine production costs and potential profits, study production methods that produce the best quality of fish, develop and refine production technology, and explore recreational aspects of West Virginias aquaculture equation.
For more information on the program, visithttp://www.caf.wvu.edu/afmdp/.