 Welcome to Sheboygan. We timed it perfectly for middle of January on Lake Michigan. It's beautiful weather, beautiful day, and thanks for making the journey to be here. We're really excited. This is our first annual Eat Wisconsin Fish Summit. We're excited to have a variety of different people coming from different perspectives here. The point of today is really to get people together who are interested in local Wisconsin fish and start talking about some of the issues surrounding local fish, maybe some of the obstacles, barriers, questions that people have. It's really a day to learn, and then also we want to learn from you. So the afternoon is basically dedicated to panels and discussion, and that's what we want it to be. We are going to do some presentations this morning to give some people who maybe aren't familiar with what types of local fish we have. How is it to be a commercial fisherman on the Great Lakes? Fish farmers in Wisconsin, so we want to give some background information, and then after our whitefish lunch, we will be having our panels up here. So thanks so much for coming. By the way, my name is Kathy Klein, and I am the Education Outreach Specialist for the UW Sea Grant Institute. Before I explain why we have a Sea Grant Institute in Wisconsin, because people get a little confused about that sometimes. I just want to thank our sponsors Sea Grant, one of them, but also the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. We applied for a Bi-Local Bi-Wisconsin Grant, and they granted it to us, so we're happy that's what's supporting this workshop and our reception later on tonight, late this afternoon at the Lakeshore Culinary Institute. So thank you for DACCAP to supporting this local food initiative. And also thanks to our producers who are here and also donated fish for our reception tonight. So Bailey's Harbor Fish Company, All Natural Greens and Marinette, our perch, Baudine Fishery from Bayfield, and then Dairyland Shrimp from Westby, Wisconsin. Yes, we have a shrimp farm in Wisconsin, so we have our own local shrimp, believe it or not. Things are happening in Wisconsin. And also a little bit about Sea Grant, because that's who I work for, and that's why we're here. Sea Grant, there's a Sea Grant program in every coastal state in the United States. It's usually associated with the university. We're associated with the entire UW system. Our main office is in UW Madison. Every coastal state, yes, we are a coastal state. We have two great lakes surrounding us. That's what makes us a Sea Grant program. So every great lake state has a Sea Grant program as well, and we can prove that because we have somebody from Michigan Sea Grant here who will be talking later on, Ron. So this is just showing all of our Sea Grant programs, and our main job is to support research. So we support research on Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, and then we also support education and outreach around that research. So we're funding the research and then also trying to get the results of that research out to the people who can use it. So why are we here to talk about fish today? We're also part of NOAA. NOAA supports us. NOAA has a big interest in fisheries in the United States, and we're trying to bring that to a very local level here in Wisconsin, so our Wisconsin local fisheries. So why are we here to talk about fish? It's great. It's a healthy protein source, first of all. That's where we're going to start with today. Fish is a healthy thing to eat. For the first time, the new dietary guidelines from the federal government just came out. Okay, so not everybody plans all their meals based on the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, but it is a starting point and a lot of things do stem from it, like what's included in school lunch programs, for instance. So for the first time, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines has said, hey, fish is a very healthy protein source. Why not consider swapping out two servings of meat or poultry a week with seafood? It doesn't sound that dramatic, but it is a big dramatic move for the federal government to say that. So that just came out recently. Why not include more of your protein sources from seafood? So I'll just go back to here. So seafood has its rich in minerals and vitamins. It's good for your heart. It has omega-3 fatty acids in it, which is the main dietary source of omega-3 fatty acids, and research study after research study has shown is very beneficial for our brains, most importantly. So and why Wisconsin fish? And what does Wisconsin fish mean and what does local mean in Wisconsin? Brett Shaw is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the Department of Life Sciences Communication. He recently completed a study doing some surveys on what does local mean to people in Wisconsin. And he found out local means Wisconsin. Just some basic results there. Local doesn't necessarily mean the Midwest. People in Wisconsin really want to purchase things from Wisconsin. That's what's most important to them. So Brett's going to be presenting this later on during the Wisconsin Local Food Summit, which our workshop is kind of kicking off right now. And the reception tonight is kind of the official kickoff for the Wisconsin Local Food Summit. That's why we chose to be here in Sheboygan for this meeting. We wanted to tie in with that local food workshop. So more from Brett later on about that. And this is just going back again about the main things about whitefish is a healthy thing to eat, vitamins and minerals. It's lower fat, lower calorie source of protein, and those omega-3s. So why U.S. fish? Seafood is important. It's good to be eating fish, but people really should be eating fish from the United States. A big reason why, and a lot of people don't realize, and we found in working on this project, a lot of people, this really resonated that more than 90% of the seafood that we're eating in the United States right now comes from outside of the United States. So we are importing a huge amount of seafood into this country. It's a gigantic trade deficit. We have, obviously, local suppliers here in the United States. There are a lot of reasons why we should be purchasing our seafood from our own producers in the United States. And just a little bit about what that imported seafood looks like. Where is it coming from? The large portion is coming from China, Canada. We import a lot of fish from Canada. And then going down Thailand and Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, that's kind of where the, but you can definitely see the main suppliers there. And then what is the seafood that we're importing? We really love shrimp in the United States. I'm sure that's no surprise to you. A lot of people don't like seafood or say that they don't like seafood. They'll eat shrimp. Salmon is another big one. So the seafood that we're eating in the United States right now, not too diversified. We could really spread out and start enjoying some different species. And so why buy local fish? We're kind of taking it to the U.S. level, but bringing it into Wisconsin. People are starting to get more and more serious about their local food. The local food movement with produce has been going on for quite a while now. This is a report that was recently released from the National Restaurant Association, I think. And they pulled about 1,500 chefs from the American Culinary Institute about what are the top 10 trends that they see coming up for 2016. So the number one there is locally sourced meat and seafood. Now that people have kind of figured out some of the hurdles of sourcing local food, local produce, and kind of that next step is taking it to the protein sources, which can be much more complicated and difficult for a lot of reasons. We'll tackle some of those later on today about what makes protein different than some of our produce. But the demand is there. Chefs are watching. They're interested. So now is the time for producers to connect with the people who want this food. So when we started talking about local fish a couple of years ago and we started thinking about this project and we started talking to some consumers, we did some surveys and what we found is that some people would say, well, sure, I love fish and I love local fish because I go out for fish every Friday. Of course, that's what we do in Wisconsin. We love our fish fries. I love our fish fries. I mean, most people who I know have their own favorite fish fry in different places. But, you know, a lot of people don't think about when they go out for that fish fry. What are they most likely eating if they're not in Green Bay or Sheboygan? If they're in Madison, chances are they're eating cod. We love cod now in Wisconsin and, you know, it fries up really well. It makes a good fish fry. It is not from Wisconsin. And just a lot of people don't make that connection. They think I do eat fish. I'm a really good fish eater. So we have a lot of water in Wisconsin. We're rich in groundwater. We're rich in our Great Lakes. People have, I would say, I would make the case that a lot of people have lost their connection to these Great Lakes, to our water resources because we're not eating our local fish so much anymore. We have a long history of those fish fries that we used to have on Friday used to be white fish. They used to be perch out of Lake Michigan. People were very connected to those fish. We're not, you know, for, Titus will talk a little bit about why we're not getting perch from Lake Michigan right now, but a lot of things have happened to the Great Lakes. It's tough for commercial fishermen. There have been a lot of changes. But I would make the case that it's really important for us not to give up on the Great Lakes or to give up on our local fish resources because there's really no closer way that somebody can be connected to our water resources. I would argue then to eat fish raised with those water resources or from those bodies of water themselves. A lot of people go fishing in Wisconsin, but you know, not everybody does. People who go out and make their own catch and eat that fish, they feel very connected to that body of water. But for the people who aren't going out fishing or can't get out on Lake Michigan to go fishing, being able to go to a restaurant in Wisconsin or to a grocery store and buy fish from that body of water that we claim is our own in Wisconsin, that's a big deal. And I think that's something that we should support and make available to people. So that's why I make the case for local fish. I think that it's very important for our state identity who we are and what we believe in. And here are some of the people, the faces behind that local fish. This is Halverson's Fishery up in Cornucopia, Wisconsin. We've had Great Lakes fishermen, people, families fishing on the Great Lakes since the early 1800s. That's a very old industry in Wisconsin. Those are people who work very hard and are also, they're preserving that maritime history on the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. And our Wisconsin Fish Farms. We've been raising fish in Wisconsin for just as probably as long as there's been a state. Our Wisconsin Fish Farms can be, they're very different when you think about aquaculture throughout the world. We'll talk a little bit more about aquaculture. But raising fish in Wisconsin is very different than raising fish in Thailand for many, many reasons. A lot of people don't know that there is a lot of local fish available in Wisconsin that's raised on local farms. So we want to be able, we want people to know about this fish source as well. And mostly this summit is about trying to reconnect the people of Wisconsin to their local fish. So we've been working with some restaurants to bring that local fish back in. This is Brays and Milwaukee. They've been big supporters of ours bringing in both wild Great Lakes caught fish and Wisconsin farm raised fish as well. And then I'm just going to go over, we're going to have Titus is going to do a talk about commercial fishing. And Emma's going to do a talk on Wisconsin Fish Farms. But just to give you, you know, introduce you to your Wisconsin fish. So you know what fish we're talking about here. Here's our commercially caught Great Lakes fish. Some things that, well, I guess I'll let Titus kind of get more into depth with his friends. And our Wisconsin farm raised fish. And like I said, there's Pacific white shrimp, a new species. Slogi is something that we're working on. We're doing research right now at the Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility. Coming up with new species to raise in Wisconsin. And here's, you know, yellow perch right here. People have a deep connection with yellow perch. It used to be in our fish fries quite a bit. Now we're raising it on farms. And a little bit about Eat Wisconsin Fish. We started this a couple of years ago just to start figuring out how to get the word out about local fish. So this is the next step in this project. But we started off with just a small pilot program working with the Seafood Center in Madison to do some messaging about local fish. There's some farm raised rainbow trout labeling it as Wisconsin raised fish just to let people know that this fish is out there. They can buy it. As you've seen in the back of the room, we've tried to come up with some promotional information. We have a great graphic designer who's been working on this message about Eat Wisconsin Fish. So we've been trying to get the word out that way. And hopefully you picked up a local buying guide that's supported by Dak Kep as well. We just finished that. It's hot off the press. We worked with our producers. So this is a buying guide that a chef or retailer, somebody who wants to start sourcing local fish for their business can look through this guide to see what's available and from whom. It's basically a starting point. We're going to be moving it onto the web as well. So there's a little comment card in there. We're hoping if you see anything or if you have any comments about any of this workshop today, feel free to write it on the comment card. Drop it off at the registration or take it home with you. You can pop it in the mail too. We'd love to hear from you because this is all about the consumer. It's all about the retail. It's all about the producer. We want to hear your ideas. Just a little bit about our messaging there. I'm trying to get local fish back on the menus in Wisconsin. And I'm going to stop there because I'm going to try and keep us on schedule. And I'm going to introduce Titus Silhammer, who's our fishery specialist from UWC Grant. And he's going to tell you everything that you've ever wanted to do about Great Lakes commercial fishing in 20 minutes. Well, now I'm not sure I can get everything. But I am not in fact a commercial fisherman. And we do have commercial fishermen in the audience. And we will have a panel later in the day where they're going to tell you what they do. And you can ask them questions. And I think that's a great opportunity for everyone. What I'm going to do, I am a scientist. I'm a fishery specialist with Wisconsin Sea Grant. And I'm a trained scientist and I've studied fish. So really I will unfortunately give you a few graphs. There will be some data in here. But really I want to kind of give a very broad overview of sort of the importance of Great Lakes fish through time. So, you know, here we are, the Great Lakes, a very globally unique freshwater system with a lot of fish. And really our connection to fish goes back thousands of years. The Great Lakes have produced fish and provided fish to people for several thousand years. And that goes back to the Native Americans who, you know, took advantage of the very abundant freshwater resources that we had in the Great Lakes and in Wisconsin. And as the new arrivals came to North America, settled the United States, settled Canada through time, Great Lakes fish were continued to be very important. So early on, if we look at the fishery, it was really utilizing those sort of close to shore, easy to access fish. So upper left there we've got the same fishery. The same is basically a large net, weights on the bottom, floats on top. And you can go from shore, you can circle around fish, pull both sides of the net in, and you've harvested the fish. So that's, you know, still a research tool that we use today, but not really a commercial fishing tool that's used. And, you know, really provided access, fairly low investment is required to, you know, take this net and catch fish on shore. As time went on, sort of the fishery changed and the fishery also shifted offshore. So, you know, accessing fish farther from shore, things like pond nets right here, gill nets also used. And I'll describe some of those tools when we talk about the current fishery a little later on. But, you know, really the changing of the fishery through time, the evolution of the different gears that are used, and also the evolution of the technology that's used. You know, we start out here, we start out on shore, maybe with row boats accessing those near shore fish. We move to more sail-powered boats. We're getting offshore, you know, pulling in larger nets farther from land. And then our vessels are evolving. So, larger vessels are being used, you know, powered vessels, so we shift away from sail power to motorized boats. And that allows for access to different fisheries. So, an example here, we're looking at the commercial fishery of Lake Michigan through time, so 1870s to 2005. And just looking at changes. And, you know, each color here is representing a different species. And, you know, we can really see sort of the heyday back in the late 1800s. You know, some very high catch totals, so 45 million pounds. With the fishery really being dominated, you know, sort of early on, we've got importance of whitefish. So, we've got whitefish early on, lake trout. We've got the chubs and herring and just the chubs down here, yellow for yellow perch. We move through time. The whitefish declines, the landings decline for a long time. But really, a herring and chub dominated fishery. And very high catch, so high lake trout as well, and perch. You know, sort of declines through time here into the mid 1900s. And we have shifts with an increase in catch here in the mid 1900s. But here we see that sort of loss of the fishery for lake trout and chubs really carrying a lot of the fishery. And then we've got our yellow through time. And right there, our yellow perch. That's where our Lake Michigan yellow perch fishery is closed. So, you know, really, it's a story of change through time. And if we look at sort of the current fishery, even back in 2005, really dominated by whitefish. And that's the story that we'll see looking at sort of the current Wisconsin's current commercial fishery, really dominated by whitefish these days. So, interesting story though. And this, when we look at, you know, why the fishery has changed through time, invasive species have really been an important factor in that. And this is just alewife harvest. And if we look at the commercial alewife harvest, if we add that in, we actually see overall very high biomass being harvested from the lake. But what we have is a shift from these, you know, fish that we can eat to fish that we really can't eat and fish that aren't native to the Great Lakes. So really changing food web changes over time and, you know, overall this sort of a decline in the total production in the lake. And, you know, what the decline, there's no, there's no single reason for that. You know, I think it's easy to say, well, the fish, the commercial fishing went down, that's because of overfishing. But not, that's not the answer. It really, it's all five of these. So as we moved into Wisconsin, we settled the Great Lakes. And as we settled the region, or the region was settled, the land was developed. Dams were built. So dams were built for power to really take advantage of the areas that we had. Habitat was destroyed, lumber, mining, agriculture, all changing the landscape over time and really affecting the available habitat that was there for those fish. Pollution. You know, the solution to pollution is dilution. A long time, you know, sort of the, that's the idea, that's how we dealt with it. And as we continue to deal with things like PCB contamination in the river sediments, those did not dilute, they're still there. And really a very large role here of invasive species. So the sea lamprey, the alewife, the zebra and quagga mussels have really changed the food web that we have in Lake Michigan, particularly where, you know, we have sort of a, this is a different lake than 50 years ago, than 100 years ago. And, you know, where we go in the future really depends on a lot of these invasive species-driven food web changes. So in terms of the fishery today, we can look at, this is just Great Lakes wide. We can see, you know, overall, the Canadian side of Lake Erie provides quite a bit of the total catch in the Great Lakes. Lake Erie is shallow, it's a lot warmer, it's more productive, and it can produce more fish. So lots of the fish coming out of here tend to be small fish, or smaller fish than we have in Lake Michigan. So perch, walleye, smelt. Some of the big producing fish out of Lake Erie. But also, we see an importance here of Lake Michigan. In the fishery, you can see that big spike here from the alewife years. And, you know, overall, it's been fairly stable now. Harvests are, you know, holding steady. This is some more recent numbers, 2013. Looking at total catch, this is combined Canada and the United States. Looking at by species, Lake Whitefish, really the dominant overall species harvested from the Great Lakes. Representing the largest catch total, this is pounds, and the highest value about, I guess, about $17 million. Followed closely by the perch and walleye, and this is really where the Canadian side of the lake, Lake Erie, comes in. Pretty much all this walleye is coming out of Lake Erie. Most of this perch is coming out of Lake Erie as well in the Canadian side. And then some other species, Lake Herring and other species that we have in the Lake Superior Waters of Wisconsin, Lake Trout as well, to a lesser degree. So, you know, when we look at Wisconsin's commercial fishery today, it's really a story about whitefish, for the most part. So, you know, the current state of the fishery, it's very closely managed and regulated. And, you know, we can talk to commercial fishermen, and, you know, they have to deal with a lot of different regulations and rules. And I think overall, what we're looking at is, you know, trying to have a sustainable fishery and providing fish into the future. There's a limited entry system. So, there's only a certain number of commercial fishing licenses that are available. Several of the species are fished on quotas. So, you can look at the population size. This is how large the population size is in Lake Michigan, say, for whitefish. And then the quota is set. This is the sort of amount of fish that can be harvested. And that's then divided up among the licenses. Also, restrictions on the different types of fishing gear that can be used, time of the year, open seasons. And that's how the fisheries are really managed. In terms of gear type, I think it's, you know, we can talk about the species, but what about, how are they caught? I think that's, you know, something interesting to know about your fishery to better understand it. Trap nets. This is one of the gear types available. So, a large, in sort of live entrainment gear become the fish. We'll basically swim. We've got long leads. We've got wings. And the fish will swim into these and they get corraled into the pot right here. And then they swim around until a trap net boat comes out, lift the nets up. So, we've got buoys out in the water, marking different parts of the net. The pot has pulled over the back of the trap net boat, which pushes all the fish to one side. Here's a bunch of white fish coming out of Lake Michigan. And then they're sorted. So, you can dip those fish out, sort them. This is a lake trout right here. So, lake trout, not looking for those, just toss back into the lake. You can swim away. Smaller white fish also tossed out. And they can grow to be larger so we can eat them later on. This is our catch here. So, we've got white fish coming out of the net. And just a view of some different buoys that are out there. Another gear type, gill net. So, gill nets have been an available gear type for a very long time. The nets now made out of monofilament so the fish don't see them. They swim into them and they get entangled in those nets. The fish can then be pulled up. You've got different fish tubs here. You can fish in winter, in summer. But then again, it depends on where the different gear types are allowed. So, head out in the lake. Here's some of the technology, very old technology at this point. But a hydraulic lifter to help bring those gill nets into the boat. So, rather than in the 1800s you may have pulled these in by hand. Now there's an assistant there to bring that in. This is a set of gill nets here. This is for chub fishing. So, one of the different ways to target different species is to use different size mesh. So, smaller mesh, you'll catch smaller fish, larger mesh. If you were fishing for white fish, you would have a larger mesh size, larger hole, so your white fish would swim into that. Setting that in different places, in different depths, at different times can help target the species that you want to catch. This is a chub fishery here. So, a small mesh size. Chubs come in right there on the board and eventually smoked. And we can enjoy those smoked chubs. Trawling, sort of a limited gear type in the Great Lakes. But there is some trawling. So, basically dragging a large net through the midwater or along the bottom and catching the fish that are there. Different trawlers. Got a large drum here that rolls that net up as it's put in the water. Here's the net coming in. And that's a more mobile gear type that can catch the fish where they're at and so they're setting things and waiting for the fish to come in. So, in terms of Wisconsin's commercial harvest, what does it look like? So, I've got some 2013 values here. This is the total harvest for Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan in 2013. Over 90% of that is the white fish. So, we're very much a white fish area now. Lesser degree, there's yellow perch coming out of Green Bay. There is a perch fishery in Green Bay with a small quota there. But again, the Lake Michigan fishery for perch, that's been closed since the mid-90s. And, you know, if we look at why that, you know, they're very limited fishing effort for that perch now even on the recreational side. And that perch fishery just hasn't come back. You know, the reasons, you know, probably related, most likely related to invasive species and the zebra and quagga mussels changing the food web and making it really hard for perch to survive in Lake Michigan. Smelt, small amount of smelt, chubs, some chub fishing, and burbot. And really, we've seen, you know, sort of a shift away from catching some of these smelt and chubs. Again, probably changes in population, but also changes in the lake. You know, the water's very clear now. If you're a small fish, like the rainbow smelt coming into, through the very clear waters of near shore Lake Michigan is going to be a problem. So do we have small populations or have some of these fish shifted into really the deeper waters? And, you know, questions there about, you know, lake-wide what's happening to the food web and, you know, in the future what's that food web going to look like? Lake Superior, again, a large portion here of whitefish being caught. But Cisco, also the lake herring right here, providing a large chunk of that. That's a very seasonal fishery and really driven by the eggs, which there's a very large market for the eggs going over to Scandinavia. Some, the Ciscoette, which are the fat lake trout and the lake trout as well, chubs, and some of the bourbon. And I put bourbon up here because we will have, we're going to have bourbon on the menu later, I think, yes? Yes. Yes, so bourbon are only freshwater cod species and it's a tasty fish. So maybe not much to look at. So the future, you know, we're having continued management into the future to sustain the fisheries. You know, questions, what's going to happen with total production? What are potential changes? You know, certainly climate change and warming of the waters could change our fisheries. This is a recent study and what it's just looking at is recent days and of the temperature preference for these different species just between 1979 and 2006. So not even projecting into the future, but just looking at changes through time and we actually see for some of these species, walleye, Chinook salmon, lean lake trout, are seeing actually more habitat area in Lake Superior, Lake Superior, very deep, very cold. And so warming, actually increasing some of this habitat for some of these species, Ciscoette lake trout, maybe declining. That's more of a deep, deep water species. So, you know, it's just really another story of changing lakes. You know, the food web, the ecology is changing and I think that introduces a lot of uncertainty into the future. And then the continued threats of invasive species, you know, I think we're still dealing with the species that we have, things like sea lamprey, really sort of a success story in control of an invasive species, but also an ongoing cost. You know, we need to continue controlling lamprey or the numbers will increase and impact our fisheries, but things like zebra and quagga mussel changes on the lakes, round gobies, how many round gobies are out there? What's eating round gobies? You know, if you're a fish that can really kind of shift over and one of the things we've seen with the white fish, white fish are able to feed on the mussels, the zebra and quagga mussels. Not a great food source, but at least they have food out there. And then also seeing them shift into eating round gobies as well. So it's really some of these species that can take advantage of what's available that might succeed into the future. But yeah, I think, you know, question marks into the future, but you know, with sustainable management, you will have fish to eat into the future. And that's what I've got for sort of a very brief overview of the commercial fishery. Yes. Hello everyone, my name is Emma Weirma. I'm from the UW-Wisconsin Stevens Point Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility. For those of you who don't know where that is, that's up in Bayfield, Wisconsin. My position is also in collaboration with UW Sea Grant Institute. I'm here today to talk about Wisconsin Aquaculture. Again, this will be kind of a crash course in Wisconsin Aquaculture. There's a lot to know. I really want to give you the broad sense of it all. A few topics that I'll highlight is really the importance of aquaculture again, not only for Wisconsin and the Midwest, but what does that mean globally? And then I'll highlight Wisconsin Aquaculture Industry. So as a consumer of fish or a provider of fish, what, if you're buying a Wisconsin farm-raised fish, how is that really different than a fish raised overseas? How was that fish raised? And you can be confident in knowing a Wisconsin farm-raised fish is a healthy fish. It's got good quality and you're supporting your local economy, just for that general public information on that. And then I'll go into the future of sustainable aquaculture for this date and for the future, you know, for the world. I think this is a pretty powerful quote. It talks about our global aquaculture production. Right now we're at 67 million tons. That's currently right now, or 2012, it's even higher now. And they are looking at it to be doubling in less than 50 years. So in 2050, it'll be 140 million tons. And we can work together with the commercial fisheries to help meet this, but really aquaculture is going to have to help meet this demand. And that's a huge number. So not only is aquaculture needed for our global demand for seafood, but also it fits well in with agriculture. This graph, if you have not seen this before, talks about the feed conversion factors for various agricultural products and compares that with fish. The circles above show the poundage of food needed to create one pound of mass for that animal. So for cattle, 6.8 pounds of feed are needed to create one pound of mass for cattle. Pigs, it's 2.9 pounds of feed. For chickens, it's 1.7. And for fish, it's only 1.1. Now this is talking about salmon and salmonoids, but generally that's about one pound of feed per pound of body mass. So it really makes sense to be raising fish, especially from a food standpoint. So Wisconsin history and aquaculture. Aquaculture has really been around Wisconsin for a long time. Over 100 years, which is surprising to many people. And the first record was back in 1856. So it's been around a long time. It's a very diverse industry. We have a very strong bait and game fish industry here. And that is really supporting our sport fishing industry here. And I'll talk more about that. The pictures I have here are Gollins bait and game fish farm. They're located in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. They're on their third generation at this farm. They are the largest bait fish producer in Wisconsin, if not perhaps the Midwest as well. So when you think of Wisconsin fish farm, where is it in Wisconsin? Well, if you look at the map on the right, they are all over the place. But what might you think of a fish farm may not be what is registered as a fish farm? Currently there is over 2,600 fish farms in Wisconsin. But most of these are hobby farms, small family farms, or maybe not even a farm at all. Technically to be registered as a fish farm, you're raising fish for some reason. If you have fish rearing in your pond for any reason, you should technically be a fish farm. So basically about 80 of these are actually commercial. They're raising their fish. They're selling their fish. But only a dozen is a large scale. What would you think of as a large scale for a fish farm? And a new up and coming is aquaponics. So if you haven't heard that term before, it's raising fish and plants in the same system. So you're feeding the fish. They're producing waste. That waste is being broken down by beneficial bacteria and into something that plants can take up, such as nitrate. So it's a natural system and it's a recirculating system. So that water is being recirculated back to your fish. Just one statement about aquaponics. Your primary product is your plants. Fish are kind of a secondary product that you're getting, but it's still raising fish. So what is the economic impact of Wisconsin's aquaculture industry? About 14 million in annual sales. 21 million in economic activity. And it's supporting over 400 jobs, about 441 jobs. And this is increasing all the time. So aquaculture is the fastest growing segment of agriculture. So we're always seeing this being increased. Wisconsin's ranking. We are number 20 in the United States for aquaculture products. We're number nine for U.S. trout production. Number six in game fish production, like walleyes. Number two in bait fish production. And we are number one in the Midwest for aquaculture products. And that's out of our nine states, which is a pretty big deal for us. So how are fish raised in Wisconsin? Not too many people, you know, they buy, farm, raise fish, but they have no idea how they were raised. Number one is for ponds. That's probably the most common in Wisconsin. Ponds range anywhere in size, but generally they're about one to two acres in size. And most of them are man-made and they are drainable. So they were created for aquaculture specifically. Secondly are raceways. So this is kind of an older way of fish farming. They've been around for a long time. Many state, tribal and federal hatcheries still have raceways. They are also known as a flow-through system. So all your water enters at one end and exits at the other. There's no reusing of water in a raceway, but they are effective at raising fish. The new and up-and-coming, well, not necessarily new, but maybe a little bit newer for Wisconsin, is called recirculating systems. It's also known as recirculating aquaculture systems, or RAS. You'll probably hear it referred to as. And this is the ability to reuse most all of your water. So most of the systems that we work with are about 95 to 99% of water re-usage. And how we're doing this is we are being able to settle out our solids or filter our solids out with a drum filter, and then we run it through a big bio-filter, and that's a natural way of clarifying your water so you can clarify that biologically with beneficial bacteria and send it back to the fish and the fish tanks. We're looking forward to learning more about these systems for Wisconsin. I'll talk about it later, but there's a lot of regulations for water usage, so being able to reuse your water is going to be huge. And aquaponics. So I mentioned raising fish and plants together in one system. Again, you're being able to reuse your water, and that's becoming a huge interest also in Wisconsin. The big question that I get a lot are, what do you feed your fish? What is aquaculture fish fed? There's a couple of different things. One, the first is bait, and generally bait is fed to fish that are pond-reared for stocking. So if you are raising walleye for restocking, you're feeding in bait fish. Bait is pretty expensive, so you don't want to raise it as a commercial for commercial fish production, but if you're restocking fish, it's basically what we feed them. If you're feeding fish for production, for a food fish, you're going with commercialized pelleted feed. There's all different types of commercialized feed, all different brands. The picture at the left, we have to feed train. We feed train fingerlings in order to accept something like a pellet feed. So the larval fish here is a walleye, and we start them off as soon as they hatch out, they're looking for food within three to five days. You can see that his belly is pretty full. He's accepting feed. We get him going on something called otahimi. Tastes great to them. It looks great to them. Has fish meal in it, and they're accepting this. The picture at right, it's hard to see it, but this is our brood stock walleye in there. They've been feed trained at a young age to eat commercialized feed. So again, this is for the production for food fish. To go into a little bit more detail about commercial feeds, a lot of people say, well, what's in fish food? What's in that commercialized feed? Well, here is a picture taken right off of one of our feed bags at the facility. This is for our trout brood stock. Again, there's all different feeds. There's a lot of research done on what kind of nutrients are put into feeds to make that fish grow the fastest, be the healthiest. A couple of things I wanted to point out is there's protein, fat, and fiber, and that's all looked at very carefully for different species. And for a brood stock, maybe the fat content would be a little higher. And they come in all different sizes. Again, this one is 6.4 millimeters in size. Another thing I wanted to point out is pigment. Sometimes our feed has pigment in it. This certain pigment is Canthaxanthin. We also have another pigment that's called Aztecxanthin. These are both FDA-approved pigments, and they are antioxidants, pretty much. So these pigments are naturally found in things like shellfish, like zooplankton, and crustaceans. So the fish is naturally getting this in the wild. And so it's an antioxidant for them, for their health, but also it helps with pigmentation in the flesh color. So when you eat an Atlantic salmon, and it's kind of a bright, nice flesh color, it's probably because the pigment has been in their feed. And that's not a bad thing. That's a positive thing. You can actually find these pigments at a health food store for human consumption as well. Another thing I wanted to point out is fish meal. There is fish meal in fish feed, in certain fish feeds. Fish that are more omnivorous, like tilapia, you might have a feed that has more plant-based protein or a soy protein. But trout and fish like walleye, they want a fish meal in their feed, not only because of the scent or the smell, but the health of the fish. It's only natural that fish meal would be in a highly carnivorous fish. And it's sustainable and it's certified safe. So what that means is the amount of fish meal that goes in here to produce many fish is quite small. And certified safe means that the PCB content and mercury content that could be in that fish meal is very low and it's at a health and a safe level for us to be feeding our food fish. So just going into that point a little more, a fish raised in Wisconsin is a healthy fish. What does that mean? Well, we're doing it sustainably. This is all land-based aquaculture I'm talking about today. We're not talking about net-pen aquaculture, so there's no intermix with wild species. There's no disease transfer. They're raised in a good water quality environment. And how do we know that? Well, if your fish gets sick, there's really not much you can do. There's a few antibiotics that are approved for the U.S., but really they might not be that effective. They're expensive, so really if you're a farmer in Wisconsin, you want to keep your fish healthy. You want to be monitoring them every day. You want to be checking water quality, monitoring that overseas, for example. We have no regulation on how that fish is raised. A lot of times it is in a poor environment, and what they do is they give an antibiotic to them, and they just probably keep giving them antibiotics because it's not regulated over there. Here it is, and generally we don't have to use it, and we don't use it. So a healthy fish, you see good growth in a healthy fish, because that's what happens, and that means profit. So of course that's what we want, that's what we want to see, plus we know it's a healthy farm-raised fish. I just wanted to highlight a few bottlenecks that we see in the industry. We're directly with a lot of farmers, and we see some of these limitations in bottlenecks. One of these being very strict permitting and regulations for farmers, and it makes farmers very difficult for them to advance, or to just sustain their farm. It's very unfair, and what I'm talking about is their water usage and their effluent. So aquaculture and agriculture should be in the same category, but it's really not. Aquaculture is very regulated by the DNR, which is much dad-cat, Department of Agriculture. There is new legislation out currently right now with a bill being looked over to make aquaculture part of agriculture, and all that means is pretty much leveling the playing field. We're not saying that all of a sudden aquaculture, there will be no regulation for it. We're just hoping that this will really help advance the industry and help our farmers. Another bottleneck is competition with imported seafood. As Kathy mentioned, 90% of our seafood is coming from overseas, but 1% of that is actually inspected. So like I stated, we have no idea how that fish was raised overseas. When it comes to us, it's usually packaged, it's frozen, maybe it's looked over for filet quality or flesh quality, but we don't really know where that came from. And our farmers that are providing a really good, sustainable product, it tastes good, it's healthy, it's well-raised. We're competing with things like tilapia that's 2.99 a pound. And this picture is pretty funny to me because it says quality seafood. Well, it was previously frozen, it was a product of China. And if you really want to eat something that's been raised, processed, shipped over here and frozen for 2.99 a pound, it's pretty scary to think what that fish had to go through. It's obviously probably wasn't in the best environment. So we're really trying to push for is read labels. What's been happening now is labeling is becoming much less strict. So companies don't have to label if they're from China, and the market here doesn't really might not require it. So if you look at a piece of seafood and it's not labeled, it's pretty much you probably don't want to eat that because it's probably coming from overseas. And really we're telling our farmers and they're doing a good job at this, is your market a premium product, you get what you pay for. And if it's 2.99 a pound tilapia, then it's probably going to taste like a 2.99 tilapia from China. Another bottleneck too that's kind of associated with the previous slide is public education. A lot of people think farm raised and they think negative thoughts. There's been a lot of media about net pen aquaculture and how that's a negative, just a negative feeling. Well farm raised here isn't the same as farm raised overseas. Farm raised in Wisconsin is sustainable, but I'm not sure people understand what that means, where their fish is coming from. We really want to promote locally raised or locally caught, either one. And promote sustainability for sure. The pictures are of our local schools, so our facility has helped to incorporate aquaponics into local schools so students can raise fish and they can raise vegetables. And not only are they learning from these, they can incorporate their classes with aquaponics. They can look at biology, technology, they can look at marketing and business. And also they can have a fish fry at the end of the year. So our facility is really promoting that and students are learning this at an early age, not only what aquaculture is, but how to be sustainable. Another big bottleneck that people don't really think about is workforce education. This industry is exponentially increasing and investors are looking for workers. And it's not, it doesn't mean you're experienced if you go to school in this, it's really about experience. So hands-on education is huge and they are in such high demand. So it's surprising but one of the largest threats to new facilities is poor management. So a new investor will come in, hire somebody that has a degree in this, but has never raised a fish before in their life. So we see a lot of issues with that. So what we're doing in our facility and what we're promoting is getting hands on education, go to a fish farm if you want to be in this business or if you start to be anywhere near management. In our facility we do a lot of hands-on training and education. So we are constantly training workers and giving them out to the industry. One last bottleneck is the fish themselves. So many times raising fish might not be the issue, it's actually making a profit. So some species might be good at a small level, a local level or urban markets, but as soon as you hit commercialization of that species that might not make you the profit that you thought. Availability of eggs or feed-trade fingerlings. If one company is providing eggs or fingerlings and all of a sudden they go out of business or they quit doing that species and change to a different one, that was your main income. That was where you were getting your eggs. So we talk about bioplan, know your species, and definitely have a backup plan. Literally don't put all your eggs in one basket. Make sure that you have a couple of companies that you can order from as a fish farmer. I talked about our facility a little bit throughout the presentation, but I just wanted to highlight our mission is promoting education and obviously advancing sustainable aquaculture. We do this a number of different ways. We're basically focused on Wisconsin, but we have partners across the Midwest, even internationally. But we have projects and partnerships. Our partnerships are state, federal, tribal, private. We've got organizations partnered with us. We've got hatcheries, farms. Workforce education is a big deal for us. So like I stated, we always have interns coming in. We're hiring new hires all the time, and then we are providing them to the industry for that hands-on education. Technology transfer, technology in this industry is always changing. It's always advancing. We are testing technology at our facility just to know what works, what's efficient, and then we can transfer that to the industry as well. The key thing for us is all of our research and projects are very relevant, and we are working directly with farmers to know what do they want. Do they want to know about a certain species or a technology? We have about eight projects going on right now. We have eight different species at the facility right now, so we try to make this relevant. We're trying to directly benefit the industry. Where are we headed for aquaculture? Like I mentioned before, being able to reuse your water, so recirculating aquaculture systems. Again, land-based sustainable systems can reuse 95 to 98% of your water. Partial recirculation is a new up and coming as well. We have a lot of farmers in Wisconsin that are looking into partial recirc. It's not so much capital cost. You might not need a drum filter or a biofilter, but you can settle all its out with a different tank setup and system. And to a farmer that are capping out their water, they're using as much water as they can, but they still want to advance or expand. There's really nothing, not much they can do, so they have to look into being able to reuse some of that water. Capital cost might be a little higher, but your profit could be faster or is faster. There's things you can control, like your temperature, your water quality, and you can see your fish directly. In a pond, that might be more difficult. You can't control things like temperature, predation, things like that. In an indoor system, you can do that. And there's a greater species selection as well. You can look into species such as Arctic char. This picture is a one-year-old char. We're able to get to market. We're working with a private company with them. In recirc, we could get them to market in one year without recirculation or control things like temperature and water quality. It might take twice that long or even three times that long. Where else are we headed? Well, the local food movement. Just like today and tomorrow's local food summit, there's been a really big push for this, which is great for Wisconsin aquaculture. Technology advancement, like I said, it's always improving, it's always advancing. We're here to test that and to transfer that to the industry. New promising species for food fish. That's the future of Atlantic salmon that we're working with. That's becoming a new and upcoming species for Wisconsin. We're looking to raise Atlantic salmon in Wisconsin for the industry. That will be huge. Arctic char is a big one as well and saga, like Kathy mentioned. Saga is a cross between a female walleye and a male saga. The reason we like to see walleye for a food fish is we see that they grow almost twice as fast as walleye. They're a really good species. Workforce development for conferences, workshops from our facility. We're really trying to get people out there and get people hands-on experience. And there's a lot of different resource agencies out there. NICRAC is the North Central Region Aquaculture Center. WAA, Wisconsin Aquaculture Association, U.S. Trout Farmers, UWC Grant Institute, we put on today, there's resources out there to really advance this industry in Wisconsin. And definitely if you're a farmer or if you want more information, contact those agencies. That's pretty much all I have for you today. If you want more information on us or our projects, anything, our website is aquaculture.uwsp.edu. We also have brochures in the back. And if you have any questions for me, you can grab me anytime.