Upstart Florida hatchery on
aquaculture’s cutting edge
In the spring of 2012, the Tampa area was an excit-
ing place to be part of the nascent marine fish breeding
world. Having just moved there to begin work at Segrest
Farms, I found myself spending more and more time in
the expansive saltwater rooms, where I met many aspir-
ing aquaculturists and some of the pioneers of the Ris-
ing Tide Conservation initative—a coalition of aquarists
from zoos, public aquariums, and private commercial
aquaculture and amateur breeders whose goal is the cap-
tive production of species in high demand. Fresh from
their early success raising Koran Angelfish from spawn-
ings in a large public aquarium, they were already chasing
the pipe dream of breeding Pacific Blue Tangs. Their early
goals were an inspiration to our team at Segrest and many
other aquaculturists.
One of these pioneers was Jonathan Foster, a local
clownfish breeder who had begun selling us batches of
Tomato and Ocellaris Clowns, driving down to the facil-
ity each week to hand-deliver them. At some point, our
paths crossed in one of the warehouses and we started
talking about marine fish breeding and its unknown but
incredibly promising future. Soon we began having these
wide-ranging discussions on a regular basis, usually as
we walked toward the marine buildings to drop off Fos-
ter’s ever-increasing deliveries of fishes. His keen grasp
of the complexities of breeding marine fishes on a com-
mercial scale and his unbridled enthusiasm for his work
impressed me deeply, and although it has been years
since I left the Tampa area, it has been a great pleasure
to watch from afar as his company, FishEye Aquaculture,
has grown and moved to the cutting edge of marine or-
namental breeding. So when my recent travels took me
back to Florida, I made sure to take him up on his long-
standing offer to visit his facility in Dade City, a scenic
40-minute drive from Tampa through farm country.
Foster, youthful and energetic in his late thirties,
walked out of his main production building, a modest
structure about the size of a large garage, to greet me.findings and happenings of note in the marine world
NEWS
Broodstock Lookdowns (Selene vomer) being raised
for FishEye’s expanding captive-breeding efforts. The
Tampa area farm is working closely with researchers
from the Rising Tide Initiative and the University of
Florida Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory (TAL).