armer raises 

 a fishy crop 



i 



When Lee Brothers took over his 

 family's 800-acre farm near Aurora six 

 years ago, the outlook for agriculture 

 was dim. 



Each day television news brought 

 word of falling prices, failed crops and 

 foreclosures. 



But Brothers was determined not to 

 become one of the statistics. 



"I started looking at another way to 

 make money because farming was so 

 depressed," he says. 



Now, he thinks he's found the answer. 



Alongside rows of corn and beans in 

 the fertile Beaufort County lowland. 

 Brothers is raising hybrid striped bass 

 in ponds. 



If he succeeds, he will be the first 

 aquaculturist in the state to produce a 

 commercial crop of the fish. 



Brothers has named his new venture 

 Carolina Fisheries. And he admits it's 

 risky. 



Nobody has ever raised hybrids for 

 food on a commercial scale in North 

 Carolina. And even though he studied 

 marine biology in college, this is his 

 first attempt at raising fish. 



One moment, he doubts he'll ever 

 harvest his first crop. 



"I'm not pessimistic at all," Brothers 

 says. "But I keep it in the back of my 

 mind that I could walk down here one 

 day and those fish could all be belly up." 



The next moment, he's adding up 

 how many pounds of fish he could 



By Nancy Davis 



harvest if everything goes well. 



Eventually, the optimist in Brothers 

 wins out. Like any farmer, he's not 

 discouraged by the prospect of a failed 

 crop. 



"I'm not scared to take a chance," he 

 adds. "I take one every year farming. If I 

 can keep (the fish) alive until I sell, I'll 

 be happy. It will be something that I can 

 look back on my life and say I've done 

 something." 



Brothers' father Harvey is helping 

 with the fish farm. He says it's his son's 

 nature to experiment. 



When Brothers was a youngster, he 

 and his brother used a chemistry set to 

 build a bomb. "They blew up the end of 

 my tobacco barn," Harvey recalls. 



Brothers reminds his father that his 

 fish experiment should have more con- 

 structive results. 



Ron Hodson, Sea Grant's associate 

 director, believes that Brothers' opera- 

 tion could be just what the state's fledg- 

 ling aquaculture industry needs. A suc- 

 cessful harvest will encourage others to 

 try fish farming. And the new industry 

 could offer farmers an alternative to the 

 fields. 



If fish prove to be a moneymaker. 

 Brothers says he'll forget all about corn 

 and beans. 



"I've always wanted to do something 

 like this," he says. "This is right down 

 my line. I love the water." 



Last year after Brothers decided 

 aquaculture was the way of the future, 

 he spent several months traveling to 

 other facilities and reading everything 

 about fish farming that he could find. 



His research indicated that declines 

 of wild striped bass had left an unfilled 

 demand for as much as 10 million 

 pounds of the fish per year The hybrid 

 could help fill that void. 



Realizing that Brothers' success 

 could mean a new industry for the state. 



Hodson obtained a grant from the Na- 

 tional Coastal Resources Research and 

 Development Institute (NCRI). 



The grant will be applied to Brothers' 

 project to help produce information 

 that will help other growers assess the 

 costs and potential profits of growing 

 hybrids. And it will provide a chance to 

 study the impact a large volume of fish 

 will have on the demand and price 

 structure of the market. 



As part of the NCRI grant, Sea Grant 

 will use Brothers' farm as a demonstra- 

 tion project for potential aquacul- 

 turists. 



Brothers constructed his first ponds 

 this spring. He dug three three-acre 

 ponds, filled them with water and stock- 

 ed them each with 30,000 hybrid 

 fingerlings. 



By late fall, he will seine the ponds, 

 sort the fish according to size and 

 restock them in three new six-acre 

 ponds where they'll remain until 

 harvest about a year later 



Until then. Brothers is taking notes 

 about everything— whether it's the 

 oxygen level in the ponds or how the 

 fish are feeding that day. 



The daily diary should help him next 

 time around, and it could serve as a 

 guide for new aquaculturists. 



Even if his first year is not a financial 

 success. Brothers intends to keep try- 

 ing. It's not a farmer's way to give up 

 after one bad year, he says. 



He hopes that within two years, he 

 will have sold his first crop, and some 

 other folks will be encouraged to join 

 him in the new industry. 



Even Brothers' father, who has spent 

 a lifetime farming, thinks aquaculture is 

 going to be more profitable than 

 agriculture. 



He adds, "If I was a young man and I 

 could get up enough money, I'd try it. 

 But I'd wait and see how Lee did first." 



