Sturgeon being studied in B.C.
As reported earlier by FishfarmingXpert, sturgeon farming is alive and well at a site in Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast just north of Vancouver, where Target Marine has some six generations of White Sturgeon and awaiting the first production of caviar. Recently, The Navigator Newspaper of the Vancouver Island University (VIU) reported that "Nine adult white sturgeons living in captivity will soon find a new home at the future International Centre for Sturgeon Studies (ICSS) planned to begin construction at the Nanaimo campus in Feb. ‘09. The new facility will help students and faculty of the Fisheries and Aquaculture department conserve and learn more about white sturgeons, the largest freshwater fish in North America.
Since 1984, Malaspina University-College (now VIU) has been the only post-secondary institution that spawns and studies the white sturgeons at its campus hatchery. The Fisheries and Aquaculture department will soon be collaborating with international research experts from the U.S., Russia, France, Italy, Iran, and Germany, at the new ICSS. The aim of the facility will be to continue to conserve, study, and spawn white sturgeons, one of the main sources of expensive black market caviars. Right now, the white sturgeons living in captivity at VIU’s Nanaimo campus are running out of space and are not safe from theft in their current home—the above ground pool-like tank currently in the campus greenhouse, bldg. 391.
The white sturgeon species has been around for more than 200 million years. When fully grown, the fish can be up to fifteen feet long and live to be over 100 years old. The oldest sturgeon at VIU is 36 years old. Anne McCarthy, an alumnus of the Fisheries and Aquaculture diploma program and a current lab and hatchery technologist at VIU, says having a research facility like the ICSS on campus will greatly aid students and researchers of the fisheries and aquaculture department. “It is amazing for students in the Fisheries and Aquaculture department to get to work with them, but the sturgeons need a more secure space than a chain-link fence as they are quite valuable fish,” McCarthy says.
The ICSS will add to the department’s growing list of facilities such as the Centre for Shellfish Research, the Deep Bay field site, and the Pacific Biological Station—a federal fisheries research facility in Departure Bay—all of which offer hands-on work experience to students.
Gord Edmondson, sturgeon researcher and hatchery technologist for the Fisheries and Aquaculture department says it will be mainly top experts using the ICSS as a research facility, but it could also be a hands-on training facility for students, and potentially increase their access to professional researchers, and provide some students with co-op opportunities. “There will not be any additional courses offered with the centre,” Edmondson says. But, having the only ICSS in Canada should increase the likeliness of success when the institution applies for general funding, since VIU is the only school in the country with adult fish on site, he says.
Right now there are only 20 students in the fisheries and aquaculture program at VIU. Students are enthusiastic and passionate about their studies and the additional research facility, says McCarthy. “Everything we do is hands on,” says McCarthy. “We have good contacts within the industry, and offer each student a practicum where they must work one day a week out in the field with one of several of our industry partners. The ICSS will just add to their resources.” Working closely with professionals, the instructors of the department “know what students need to know,” to excel in their jobs once they graduate, McCarthy says. The faculty knows the processes of the industry, and keeps the classroom reserved as a place to review and learn from mistakes.
But, the ICSS will be a professionally run facility set-up to enhance the already thriving fisheries and aquaculture department at VIU, says Edmondson. Once construction begins, he says he predicts it will be complete by the summer of 2010.
