LEFT: Hybrid striped bass are put in these "purging" tanks to cleanse their systems before they are shipped and sold on the live market. 

 RIGHT: This room is used to spawn fish at Castle Hayne Fisheries in Aurora. 



JUGGLING 



HYBRIDS 

 AND HOMES 



BALANCING FISH FARMING 

 AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT 



By Kathleen Angione 



T 



■ he first season Lee Brothers raised 

 hybrid striped bass fingerlings on his farm, he 

 slept in his truck every night. 



"I was scared to death," he admits, adding 

 that he would get up several times during 

 the night to check oxygen levels in the tanks 

 holding the young fish. "No one knew anything 

 about fingerlings back then." 



That was 1998. Today, Brothers sells two 

 million fingerlings per year to other hybrid 

 growers. He has 50 earthen ponds, and raises 

 hybrid striped bass year round as food fish and 

 fingerlings. 



"It's like a marriage," he says, half- 

 jokingly. "You get out of it what you put in it." 



When Brothers first started raising hybrids 

 in ponds in 1987, his was the first operation in 

 the United States. A cross between the white 

 bass and the striped bass, hybrids are popular in 

 the sushi and sashimi markets of the Northeast, 



typically selling for $3 * _ ffi&'JM During the last 



per pound live and about Wm^^' ''^^^^^p several years, Beaufort 



$2.50 per pound on the WEP'i ' > 'Ww County has experienced 



fillet market. jgMHHH noticeable growth and 



Now Brothers has fcte^gggttf^S development. From 1990 



one of five hybrid striped iiHfflNHr'' ^^'"^s^^^^B to 2004, the county's 



bass farms in Beaufort ■BWflliK^^r' ^^S BPp^f? population rose more 



in farm gate value, or the c c ... , > . , . , Many of 



b Sperm from a white bass (top) is combined J 



net value of the product wjth eggs from a striped bass (mjddle) these suburban-like 

 after it leaves the farm to create a hybrid striped bass (bottom). developments are 

 and marketing costs are Hybrids were first produced in downstream from hybrid 



subtracted. South Carolina during the mid- 1 960s. striped bass farms, and 



"This hybrid stuff is some residents accuse 



high risk, high profit," says Brothers. "But then these aquaculture operations of causing fish kills 

 again, I've always been a gambler," the Aurora and algal blooms in local waterways, 

 native adds with a smile. As the county's population has increased, 



Perhaps one thing Brothers, and other the N.C. Division of Water Quality (DWQ) has 

 area hybrid farmers, didn't bet on was the received more complaints about degraded water 



recent influx of people into this beautiful, rural quality, says Al Hodge, the regional supervisor 

 watershed county. for the DWQ in charge of surface water. 



Like any agricultural activity, farming fish There is also some concern among long- 



means dealing with animal waste. For hybrid time residents, he adds. "Some residents worry 

 striped bass farms in North Carolina, the stan- about a drop in water quality affecting their 

 dard practice of releasing effluent from ponds property prices in the future." 

 into nearby creeks and streams is controversial. Hodge has received nine complaints about 



10 Coastwatch I Winter 2006 I www.ncseagrant.org 



