NO $6-million-dollar-a-year industry by itself can save the Hawaii economy. But one on the Windward coast of Oahu can help provide more food from our semi-exhausted world ocean resources and help feed a world population that is growing every month by the size of a New York City. Oceanic Institute
can help feed
the worldIt even helped put moi, the fish once raised for Hawaiian royalty, on the tables as the main dish at Governor Cayetano's inaugural ball at the Sheraton-Waikiki Hotel last month. Multiple scientific enterprises like it can help our economy get perking again. They deal from Hawaii strengths and geographic characteristics that can't be widely replicated elsewhere.
With these grandiose -- but accurate -- statements I am talking about the Oceanic Institute, a cluster of offices, labs and fish tanks adjacent to Sea Life Park but now separately owned and operated.
Sea Life Park, at the foot of majestic cliffs close to Makapuu Point, is a for-profit entertainment venture. Oceanic Institute is a nonprofit research lab funded mostly by Department of Agriculture and other federal grants, but hoping for some World Bank assignments and philanthropic funding, too.
OI's new president and CEO is Thomas Farewell, a former Army colonel with inspector general experience in the Corps of Engineers. He has pulled it back from operations that got it a negative federal audit report a few years ago and obliged it to pay back $1 million in grants.
He notes that the Department of Agriculture has a historic role in helping farmers better raise wheat, corn, cattle, pigs and more. Now it is turning to aquaculture to produce more food from both salt and fresh water.
It looks to the Oceanic Institute and labs on the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts to do basic high tech research and development on salt water seafoods. We have the advantage of cleaner ocean water because of our distance from pollutants and a limited coast line where tagged fish don't travel very far. Oceanic Institute clearly is No. 1 in the world in fish-stock enhancement, says Farewell.
America's second biggest foreign trade deficit, he says, is for seafood, almost half of it shrimp. The large shrimp producers in Thailand, Indonesia and China are suffering from environmental exploitation, polluted water and inadequate disease control. Really big shrimp are much harder to find in markets.
The Oceanic Institute boasts the world's largest and most genetically diverse breeding supply of Pacific white shrimp. It is working hard, too, to develop superior shrimp feeds that are environmentally compatible. Such are the aspects of its high-tech aquaculture.
OI's venture into expanding moi production has special local interest. Moi in the 19th century were specially raised for Hawaiian royalty. OI sees moi as possibly becoming as popular commercially as mahimahi.
OI's moi fingerlings are grown to market size in a large commercial pond at Heeia. Fish farmers from all islands are being educated in moi production at OI's Makapuu headquarters. They are given free fingerlings to raise for sale to five-star hotels and seafood outlets.
WITH Molokai community concurrence, OI will construct a hatchery at an ancient Hawaiian fish pond at Keawanui. Near Hilo it is joining with the University of Hawaii-Hilo to build an aquatic feeds research laboratory. At Kona it has a high-tech aquaculture demonstration project in connection with the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii.
The Oceanic Institute maintains worldwide exchanges and visitations. It disseminates know-how through scientific papers and direct education. Farewell looks on Kansas State University as one of the great developers of terrestrial animal feeds. He wants OI and its associates to become the Kansas State of aquatic feeds.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.