Mid-Atlantic Region

Delaware Sea Grant
Sea Grant Develops Optimization Model for Ballast Water Management

• Sea Grant research has produced a mathematical model that assists industry and policy decision makers in achieving economically-efficient ways to manage treatment of ballast water.


• The data set includes the most complete data for ship traffic characteristics in North America.


• The researchers also developed searchable database linked to port arrival/departure data for the U.S.


• The model is being tested and will be expandable nationwide, leveraging return on Sea Grant investment.

Maryland Sea Grant
Sea Grant Education Tool to Build Enquiry-Based Lessons is Adopted by Teachers

• Maryland Sea Grant developed an interactive online application (5E), for the creation of classroom lessons adapted from the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study.


• The 5E Instructional Modes are being used in both the California and Maryland public schools. Classroom lessons developed include modules on fisheries and water quality.

North Carolina Sea Grant
Sea Grant Aquaculture Leadership Provides Economically Feasible Alternatives to Wild Stocks

• Hybrid striped bass (HSB: white bass, Morone chrysops crossed with striped bass, M. saxatilis) rank second to salmon among cultured marine finfish in the United States.


• In the 1980s, North Carolina Sea Grant provided groundbreaking research and extension efforts to develop HSB pond aquaculture operations, which are now a multimillion dollar industry in North Carolina alone.


• Sea Grant researchers continue to work with the national industry to identify and develop domesticated, pathogen free, broodstock and selective-breeding methods.


• Domesticated broodstock is increasingly important in light of the restricted access to wild spawners due to the effects of viral hemmorhagic septicemia-a disease that spread to white bass in the Great Lakes, a traditional source for wild broodstock used by HSB producers. HSB producers are facing rising costs and decreased market prices stemming from aggressive competition from imports.

New Jersey Sea Grant
Sea Grant and Tianjin Oceanographic Administration Initiate Partnership

• Sea Grant signed a five-year cooperative agreement with the Tianjin Oceanographic Administration to conduct collaborative research on port expansion and management issues, including the fate and transport of contaminants, hydrodynamic modeling, dredged materials management, and restoration ecology/integrated coastal zone management issues.


• An initial two-year study commenced in July of 2007.

Virginia Sea Grant
Virginia Sea Grant Research Develops Strains of Native Oysters Resistant to Disease

• The family selection strategy employed by the Aquaculture Breeding Center at VIMS, and partially supported by Sea Grant's Oyster Disease Research Program, is part of a program of selection for disease resistance in Crassostrea virginica and provides genetic information to speed response to selection.


• Information obtained about the interaction between genotype and environment has already been applied within the oyster aquaculture industry in Virginia (via Bevans Oyster Company).


• This ongoing research has enabled the expansion and growth of oyster aquaculture in the Chesapeake Bay.


• The Aquaculture and Breeding Center sold 20 million disease resistant or triploid seed to dozens of growers in Virginia last year. The facility is the only source of disease resistant strains of C. virginica.