URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2018_Melissa-McCarthy

Marta Gomez-Chiarri Professor and Chair Fisheries, Animal, and Veterinary Science

on how to keep young oysters healthy, he says. “We have to have good husbandry techniques and make sure we’re not overstocking or overstretching our resources,” Raso says. “That makes having someone like Marta in the mix very valuable.” Gomez-Chiarri is applying her research on oyster populations in URI’s backyard, Narragansett Bay, as part of a large initiative through the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) grant program in Rhode Island. The funding will allow Gomez-Chiarri to research the impact of climate change in Narragansett Bay, including changes in the foods that organisms, particularly oysters, are eating and in the pathogens to which they are exposed. The funds will enable the development of underwater sensors to record data and to integrate all the information gathered from physical and biological interactions into models. The models will to try to predict what will happen in the future. “URI is the right size to encourage collaboration,” Gomez-Chiarri says. “I work with a lot of people, and I love learning new things and exploring new questions. It’s exciting here.” ± ± ±

“We’re looking, at a basic level, how probiotics interact with the larval oysters and the pathogens that can kill them,” she says. “At the practical level, the goal is to figure out how to use these probiotics in a hatchery to make sure the oyster larvae don’t die.” This knowledge of how to cultivate stronger oysters and keep them healthy is particularly important to business people like Perry Raso, owner of Rhode Island’s Matunuck Oyster Farm and the Matunuck Oyster Bar restaurant. When Raso founded the seven-acre farm in 2002 on Potter Pond in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, he remembers that there were around 15 other oyster farms in Rhode Island. Today, there are upwards of 60. “The value of the oysters has grown year after year,” says Raso, who sells more than a million oysters per year between his restaurant and wholesale accounts. Raso met Gomez-Chiarri when he was a student in one of her classes at URI, and says she has been instrumental in the success of his career. Raso plans to open an oyster hatchery in South Kingstown in the summer of 2018, which will allow him to keep all his production in southern Rhode Island, rather than relying on oyster seeds from other hatcheries. The effort will require tremendous knowledge

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