UNC Wilmington graduate student, James Hill, received the Tyson’s Best Abstract Award at the World Aquaculture Society’s conference in New Orleans. Hill was recognized for his research on feeding a mixed protein source to Red Porgy as an alternative to fish meal.

Hill’s abstract for the conference was only a small part of his overall graduate thesis, which involves replacing fish meal with three different types of meal to find a more sustainable food source for fish.

“We want to do that because in aquaculture, which is fish farming, if we’re feeding fish on land with fish from the ocean, you’re going backwards,” Hill said.

The way the industry works now, we are consuming more fish than we are producing because we are fusing fish to feel other fish.

For his thesis, Hill is testing: mixed protein meal, which was a blend of soy bean meal, corn gluten meal, and poultry meal; poultry meal; and meat and bone meal. Overseeing this process is Dr. Wade O. Watanabe, Aquaculture Program Coordinator at the UNCW Center for Marine Science.

“My role was to provide general supervision to James—logistical support for his work; provide guidance on the direction and scientific quality of his research; and ensure the quality of the oral and written publications that have been and will be produced from this research” said Watanabe.

Other aquaculture specialists can use Hill’s findings to replace expensive fish meal with inexpensive alternatives that do not dwindle the already overharvested fishery species like herring and menhaden. For the portion of his thesis that Hill presented for the conference, he concluded that fish that were fed the mixed protein meal had the same amount of growth as fish that were fed fish meal.

Hill says he is still finishing up his chemical analyses for the poultry meal, and meat and bone meal after spending about a month working on his presentation for the conference.

The presentations lasted roughly 15 minutes and took place over a span of three days. Those invited recieved a schedule of all the topics for each presentation, and attended the presentations they were interested in hearing.

This was Hill’s third time attending the World Aquaculture Society conference. In 2013, it was held in Nashville, TN and in 2014, it was held in Seattle. Watanabe served as Hill’s supervisor all three years, but Dr. Shah Alam, the fish nutritionist for the aquaculture program at UNCW and Hill’s research associate professor, accompanied Hill to New Orleans.

“As aquaculture—particularly carnivorous marine finfish aquaculture—grows internationally, the demand for fish meal is expected to outstrip the world supply in the next ten years,” said Alam, “little or no experimental work has been conducted to develop cost-effective, environmentally-friendly diets for red porgy.”

Presenting this new data at the conference not only helps spread the idea of finding alternatives to keep up with demands that the aquaculture industry faces. Watanabe says the conference also serves as a place for students to network and find future employers.

Hill hopes to get his master’s degree in May in Marine Science with a concentration in Aquaculture. Afterwards, Hill says he will take any job that has to do with aquaculture.

“Ideally I would like a job doing hands on stuff, such as building aquaculture systems, maintaining the systems, and growing the fish out to market size without having any problems.”

Right now, outside of studying aquaculture, Hill coaches the men’s Ultimate Frisbee Killer B Team.