Lee Brothers and several employees gather fingerlings from a pond. 

 Carolina Fisheries sends some as far away as Taiwan. 



Harvey Brothers, Lee Brothers 'father, says he can vouch for the power of research. 



survival rate was 60 percent, but this 

 year Brothers tried a few changes and 

 brought up the rate to about 70 percent. 



Harvey Brothers is one of the 

 skeptics won over by the power of 

 research. He's proud to point out that 

 the government's original investment of 

 more than half a million dollars through 

 Sea Grant research and the NCRI grant 



has been repaid many times over 

 through the growth in the tax value of 

 hybrid striped bass farms. 



"A lot of the research turns out not 

 to work," the father says, "but this 

 research has turned out to be a real 

 moneymaker. Every time I see Hodson 

 and Sullivan come down here, I get a 

 smile on my face and I say, 'How are 



you going to make money for me this 

 time?'" 



But the application of research, 

 with its gradual and uncertain payoffs, is 

 clearly only for people with truckloads 

 of determination and patience. Lee 

 Brothers, who used to be a row-crop 

 farmer raising com and soybeans, says it 

 just wasn't in him to quit. 



"It's been a challenge from day 

 one," Brothers says, his phone ringing 

 and employees lining up with questions. 

 "It's kind of like farming. You borrow a 

 quarter of a million dollars and throw it 

 on the ground. Sometimes you would 

 make money, and sometimes you 

 wouldn't." 



Plumbing the 

 Depths of 

 Water Quality 



n scientific studies, short time 

 frames can work like carnival mirrors 

 that twist ordinary people into wavy, 

 thin ribbons or bulging balloons of flesh. 



In a short-term view, the scientific 

 facts and figures are there all right — 

 just like the person's basic appearance 

 in the carnival mirror. But reality is 

 distorted. 



That's the risk researchers and 

 policy-makers run when they draw 

 conclusions from too short a period of 

 study, says Hans W. Paerl, Kenan 

 professor of marine and environmental 

 sciences at the University of North 

 Carolina at Chapel Hill's Institute of 

 Marine Sciences (MS) in Morehead City. 



Paerl, who has studied the Neuse 

 River for almost 20 years, says the 

 Neuse is so variable that it's hard to 

 know what is normal unless you 

 telescope out many years. 



20 AUTUMN J 998 



