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Courtesy of the Aquaculture Program Research Report from HSWRI:

HSWRI recently launched a three year project funded by the Western Regional Aquaculture Center (WRAC) to study egg quality in three different marine fishes cultured for food. The species include the pelagic California yellowtail (Seriola lalandi; YT; Figure 1); a migratory deep-sea whitefish, the sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria; SF; Figure 2); and a benthic flatfish, the California halibut (Paralichthys californicus; CH). Collaborating with HSWRI on the project are two NOAA Laboratories – the NW Fisheries Science Center and SW Fisheries Science Center, the University of Idaho, and California Sea Grant. Previous research by HSWRI and others indicates that egg quality can have a significant effect on larval and juvenile quality and rearing success. The egg-related factors of interest include fecundity, egg maturity, fertilization rate, egg size, lipid and fatty acid quantity and composition, and cleavage morphology to name a few. These egg quality traits may themselves be influenced by many factors, including diet, genetics, maternal effects (size, age, condition, etc.), pathogens, spawning time, spawning method, and even environmental parameters like temperature and water quality.

Egg quality directly affects the reproductive success of individuals in a breeding population, as well as the fitness of their offspring. This will, in turn, have a direct economic impact on an aquaculture program as a consequence of product quality. However, there are a myriad of ways in which the egg characteristics themselves are influenced and through which the resulting egg quality can be measured. Consequently, we still do not always understand across species how to predicatively determine which eggs or spawns are high quality and optimal for juvenile propagation or whether there are particular metrics that are more generally predictive than others. This remains a critical gap in our understanding of how to reliably and consistently culture healthy juvenile fish. We intend to address this lack of knowledge through the research in this three year project, thereby advancing aquaculture development for marine finfish along the U.S. West Coast and elsewhere in the United States.