# [Partners #13 - 1890 Land-Grant Universities]{.underline}

Building a Better Fish-Web Script 8/1/05

**Steeve Pomerleau**

*The Delta country is a beautiful land in a natural state. We have a lot
of water. It's a flat land. We don't see a lot of mountains but we have
a lot of river and lakes where we can do a lot of hunting and fishing.
Fishing is really part of the culture here in Arkansas. We also have a
lot of agriculture-cotton...rice...soybeans, corn*

**Narrator**

Steeve Pomerleau is a research assistant with the University of
Arkansas-Pine Bluff or UAPB. Most of his time in spent in the field
working on the 1890 land-grant's bait fish verification program. The
project's goal is to verify the recommendations for effective
aquaculture based on the university's research findings.

**Steeve Pomerleau**

*Most of the research conducted at UAPB is done in small research ponds
of about a tenth or quarter acres as opposed to commercial farms which
are over ten acres. So we want to apply the results of the research
conducted at the university, and apply those results to commercial scale
ponds.*

**Narrator**

One of the producers that Steeve is working with is Harold Saul, a
second generation fish farmer. Together, they have tackled some
difficult problems, helping Harold stay profitable in the competitive
world of bait fish production.

**Harold Saul**

*Looks like fifty!*

**Steeve Pomerleau**

*I love the personal interaction with the farmers and really being able
to help farmers and keeping them in business. This is all what it's
about.*

**Harold Saul**

*What they've done for us is to take out a lot of the guesswork. With
the verification program, what they've done-they've got us more
accuracy. Coming up with better feeds, better formulas for feeds for us
to feed our fish, and grow our fish more economically. Naturally, if we
can get more production out of less feed-the better.*

*They are the only research center in Arkansas that we can get a
verification on our fish to be safe to ship out of state. And if we
can't ship out of state, we're out of business. It's that simple.*

**Narrator**

The bait fish verification program that Harold and others are involved
with is based on the work of Nathan Stone and others at UAPB. The team
has done extensive research with a fish called the Golden Shiner. Nathan
is now turning his attention to the Rosy Red minnow.

**Nathan Stone**

*The rosy reds are an orange color with little pinky tones to them. They
have a white to a silvery underbelly. We'd like to have nutritionally
sound brooders and then that would transfer into larger eggs, harder
quality eggs and better fry*. *A fry is the little baby fish, the one
that just hatches from the egg.*

*We're hoping that it will reduce their costs and make it more
efficient. The spawning-rearing pond method-you get a mix of sizes and
it's fairly inefficient. With a jar-hatching, we can turn out even
aged-fish that go into the feeder market or be a lot more predictable
for producers.*

**Narrator**

For some, this exceptional effort may appear disproportionate for simply
meeting the leisurely needs of Arkansas's anglers. But the economic
impact goes way beyond the fish farms and riverbanks of the state.

**Nathan Stone**

*Arkansas is the leading producer of farm-raised bait fish in the United
States - about \$23 million dollars by the census of aquaculture. But
there's a multiplier effect of 6-7 fold here in the local community. It
creates a lot of jobs. The feeds that go into baitfish like soybean meal
and cottonseed meal are products that are raised here in Arkansas. And
of course there's a 10-15 fold economic multiplier when you go to retail
markets. So it generates a lot of income.*

*There's been very fast adoption of the practices from our research
recommendations. And also the farms are very progressive. And so some of
the yields and some of the survivals have been excellent and we really
depend on USDA and CSREES for the funding and the research support. It's
matched by state dollars here in Arkansas. And that's really enabled us
to support our stakeholders of fish farmers here in Arkansas. It's
really what the purpose of a land-grant is and that's what we're doing.*