A Florida native, he grew up spending much of his free
time out on the ocean along the Atlantic coast or in
the Indian River Lagoon, one of Florida’s most diverse
coastal ecosystems. His fascination with the sea eventu-
ally prompted him to set up a marine aquarium, which
led—as is so often the case—to a full-fledged obsession
with the hobby. After moving to the Tampa area in 2002,
Foster began working in a local fish shop (Fish and Oth-
er Ichthy Stuff), where he was quickly introduced to the
industry behind the hobby at a time when commercial
marine fish culture was developing into a significant and
growing part of that trade. He says his years in retail pro-
vided the opportunity to “learn about various filtration
methods, life support systems, and the importance of
water quality” and gave him a glimpse into “the inner
workings of the industry.” In 2005 he took a position as
a farm technician/biologist at the University of Florida’s
Tropical Aquaculture Lab (TAL) in Ruskin, which was
just beginning to experiment with marine fish rearing.
It was at TAL, which focuses largely on the experi-
mental production of fishes for the freshwater and, more
recently, marine aquarium trades, that Foster began
daydreaming about turning his passion for marine fish
breeding into a career. In 2008, after careful planning
and honing his craft with a growing collection of home
aquariums and larval rearing setups, both at TAL and
at home, he officially launched FishEye Aquaculture in
a modified garage. He kept a few clownfish species in
regular production and sold wholesale to local shops at
first, growing the business gradually by aiming for con-
sistent production in large numbers. Foster’s first lucky
break (and I use the word lightly here, since any aqua-
culturist knows that “luck” has a lot to do with skill and
preparedness) came in late 2009, when his attempts to
produce the popular Black Snowflake Ocellaris yielded a
beautiful surprise—a uniquely patterned “mocha” fish.
He originally dubbed it the S’mores Ocellaris, but later
it gained notoriety as the Black Ice Ocellaris, a name
coined by Oceans, Reefs & Aquariums (ORA) when they
released the same strain a few months later.
After Foster (somewhat grudgingly) changed his
original name to incorporate the more popular moni-
ker, Foster’s Black Ice Ocellaris quickly became one of
his best sellers and allowed him to expand operations
and build a 2,100-square-foot (195-m^2 ) building to
house broodstock and larval rearing systems. Around
the same time he went to MACNA, which was held in
Orlando that year, and attended a talk by Dr. Judy St.
Leger of Sea World in which she announced an exciting
new venture intended to tackle some of the bottlenecks
that had hindered the successful culture of many marine
aquarium species. This project was to become the Rising
Tide Conservation initiative, and Foster began collabo-
rating closely with its members to bring some of their
early successes into commercial production—beginning
with a batch of “mystery” pelagic eggs collected from a
public aquarium in Orlando. They turned out to be Pork-
fish eggs, and Foster managed to raise a number of them
through settlement and into adulthood, giving FishEye
Aquaculture the distinction of being the first company
to use larval rearing protocols developed by Rising Tide
to commercially produce a species.
Porkfish (Anisotremus virginicus), while not especial-
ly popular in the home aquarium hobby, are sought after
by large display aquariums, both public and private, and
Foster’s aquacultured fish were soon in high demand.
Starting with individuals he had raised from the original
batch of eggs, he continued to experiment with the spe-
cies, and after some trial and error was able to “spawn
Porkfish in something that wasn’t an aquarium the sizeJonathan Foster with a
netful of clownfish in a
growout tank.The FishEye hatchery,
northeast of Tampa, Florida.A mixed batch of young clowns,
including some new Tampa Pearls.