URI Economic Impact Report - Autumn 2020

URI RESEARCHERS HELPING OYSTER FARMERS AND FISHERIES BUILD THE ECONOMY OF RHODE ISLAND In Rhode Island, oyster populations can succumb to any of five diseases. In some cases, an infection can almost wipe out a farm’s entire supply. URI Professor Marta Gomez-Chiarri researches infectious disease in marine organisms and how to combat them. Her research with the Eastern Oyster Genome Consortium and the East Coast Shellfish Breeding Consortium will help speed up the process of breeding disease-resistant oysters. This research of how to cultivate stronger oysters and keep them healthy is particularly important to the more than 60 oyster farms in Rhode Island and business people like Perry Raso, owner of Rhode Island’s Matunuck Oyster Farm and the Matunuck Oyster Bar restaurant. “The value of the oysters has grown year after year,” said Raso, who sells more than a million oysters

per year between his restaurant and wholesale accounts. “We have to have good husbandry techniques and make sure we’re not overstocking or overstretching our resources. That makes having someone like Marta in the mix very valuable.” Commercial fishermen, scientists, and restaurateurs alike agree: There’s a huge demand for tuna. However, with wild tuna numbers rapidly declining, Terence Bradley, University of Rhode Island (URI) professor of fisheries and aquaculture science in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS), is looking to aquaculture for a better environmental and economic solution. Bradley teamed up with CELS alum and entrepreneur Peter Mottur to offset — or even eliminate — the pressure commercial fishing can put on wild fish stocks. In a public-private partnership,

URI and Mottur’s tuna production company, Greenfins, has been developing techniques, technology, and protocols to raise tuna, mahi mahi, and yellowtail kingfish in captivity through the Tuna Research Center of Excellence they established on URI’s Narraganssett Bay Campus. By fostering sustained production methods, Bradley’s vision is to enhance wild fish stocks so they can recover from overfishing. “We’re producing a clean industry with high-tech jobs that will provide fish for the market, in addition to what commercial fishermen are already producing,” Bradley said. “We believe that we’re working on a blue revolution.”

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