AquaPharm Technologies Corp. of Columbia is poised to take a big step -- from a small firm where the top officials answer their own telephones because they don't have secretaries, to an international player helping Israel cultivate the ability to "farm" fish throughout the year.
Fish-farming is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. The closing of wild fisheries in the northern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean and the increasing year-round demand for salmon, rockfish and other seasonal species have helped create the boom in the $30 billion seafood production business.
The United States has failed to net a decent share of the action, earning just 2 percent of the international yield. But that figure might soon rise, thanks to a partnership of Maryland and Israeli research institutions and businesses seeking to develop fish-farming techniques. Among the Maryland businesses is AquaPharm.
AquaPharm's work will get a major boost from a $3 million, four-year grant by the new U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Commission. The two other recipients of these initial USISTC grants are a pair of huge corporations, McDonnell Douglas and General Electric -- heady company for a firm such as AquaPharm, which currently employs only seven people.
As AquaPharm official Don S. Doering points out, fish are one of the last food supplies captured in the wild. The 3-year-old firm aims to change that by making fish-farming as predictable as chicken and beef production, in which the best characteristics are bred into the animals with the aid of science.
The firm's methods include an implanted drug that blocks the natural tendency in fish to suppress their fertility when in captivity. Israel is interested in AquaPharm's fish-farming techniques and products because the Middle East nation imports more than half its fish for consumption.
Congratulations to AquaPharm and the biotechnology department of the University of Maryland College Park, the other local participant in the partnership with Israel.
Kudos also to the Baltimore-based Maryland/Israel Development Center, the economic development alliance of the Maryland and Israeli governments, The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The non-profit MIDC brought about the first crucial link in this international arrangement.