As Aquaculture Grows, Higher Ed Prepares America's Students

Aquaculture is being studied at colleges and universities across the U.S. More than 160 aquaculture programs offer certificates, undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Santa Monica College in California recently announced a new Aquaculture Certificate Program, which includes six classroom and hands-on lab courses. The program offers the advantage of two partners at the Port of Los Angeles. AltaSea is a nonprofit public-private ocean institute that helps advance the blue economy through scientific innovation and collaboration, and Holdfast Aquaculture produces resources for sustainable seafood growth.

Nathan Churches, PhD., co-founder and chief science officer for Holdfast and the lead developer for Santa Monica College’s aquaculture program, spoke to SATS in this month’s interview.

To learn more about higher ed programs in aquaculture and how federal legislation would create more job opportunities for graduating students, visit the SATS fact sheet.

Why did you establish an aquaculture certificate program at your school? Can you tell us about the relationship with the Port of Los Angeles and how that plays into the program?

Santa Monica College (SMC) had great foresight when they paired with AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles. The port, and specifically AltaSea, have been instrumental in jump-starting the blue economy in Southern California. My business, Holdfast Aquaculture, has been collaborating with AltaSea and calling their campus home for the last four years, and it's been amazing to watch their platform grow.

The space at AltaSea is a natural fit for the SMC aquaculture program: they have ample teaching space, several businesses which can host interns, and are developing a demonstration aquaculture farm. It's hard to imagine a better interfacing of industry, academia, and the ocean-oriented community. 

At the community college level, we have been looking to continue building a supply of technical talent to meet the demand for labor in the ocean economy. Many community colleges in Los Angeles that have programming in aquaponics and marine biology will collaborate in the coming years to develop educational pathways into aquaculture, ocean economy careers, and other opportunities that the Alta Sea campus may offer.

Can you tell us about the expected program and what opportunities it will offer students?

Students who graduate from the certificate program will have the experience needed to enter the aquaculture workforce as an entry- and middle-skill worker. This includes understanding tools and techniques necessary to plumb on-land aquaculture life support systems, keep organisms alive in these systems, and important skills for transitioning to on-boat and on-water farm systems. Students will also receive a primer on aquaculture business. We hope that in addition to creating new workers, we can also help pave the path for the next generation of entrepreneurs in this industry. 

What types of jobs do you foresee for students after completing the program, especially within the aquaculture field in Southern California?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has designated Southern California as an "Aquaculture Opportunity Area," which has brought significant attention and investment to our region. We anticipate that this momentum will translate to many hundreds, or even thousands, of jobs in aquaculture in the coming decade(s). In the more immediate term, there are jobs to fill at area businesses, including those housed at AltaSea, and we hope that this program funnels students directly into working positions through the internship requirement. The skills learned in the Aquaculture Certificate Program will also be relevant to work with conservation groups, marine labs, fisheries management, and the aquarium trades. 

What are the benefits of an expanded aquaculture industry in America?

There are so many benefits to an expanded aquaculture industry in America! The most obvious benefit is the production of sustainable seafood at the local level. The U.S. imports the vast majority of the seafood consumed here. This creates an annual multi-billion dollar "seafood deficit" for our country. But we can't simply fish our U.S. wild stocks more intensively to make up for this seafood deficit - wild fisheries here are already fished to their sustainable limit. Instead, we need to produce food through ocean farms via aquaculture. In California, we have an excellent opportunity to do this in a renewable way by focusing first on the most sustainable species: seaweeds and bivalves. These organisms sequester carbon and other nutrients, require zero fresh water, help filter the water, are native to our coasts, can be used for downstream applications like biofuels, and, most importantly, are delicious! Developing aquaculture will help reduce our huge seafood deficit in this country by generating products locally and reducing costs and emissions associated with seafood. In short, it makes financial and planetary sense to increase our nation's investment in low-trophic aquaculture.