Every day, a dozen or so airplanes carrying nonhuman passengers skid to stillness on Los Angeles International Airport’s tarmac. Onboard sit boxes brimming with plastic bags of water and brightly colored fish from the Philippines, or maybe Japan, or Australia. After LAX customs inspection, they ride to nearby wholesalers who will ship them to pet stores nationwide.
This is how over 90 percent of ornamental fish make their way into home aquariums. Harvesting ornamental fish depletes wild stocks, leaves a large carbon footprint, and the stress of international travel—which can take up to three days—kills many gilled travelers unfamiliar with the confines of a plastic bag.
Across the country from LAX, Mike Schwarz and his team are farming fish to fight these shortcomings. He works at the Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center (VSAREC), a satellite research center of Virginia Tech located in Hampton, whose staff are affiliated with Virginia Sea Grant. Schwarz is an aquaculture specialist, which essentially means he’s really good at growing fish.
But “it’s not just throwing feed into a fish pond,” he says. Fish are picky. Every species has quirks that make breeding and raising it in a tank difficult. Schwarz researches how best to care for a fish and its quirks, from perfecting diet and water flow, to stymying cannibalism.
A few years ago, he was trying to figure out how to tank-raise cobia, a fish people like to eat for its firm texture and mild flavor. Unfortunately, cobia larvae also like to eat cobia.
“They eat the heck out of each other,” Schwarz says, holding up two fingers about a half inch apart. “A fish could be that big and whacking its brother.” But after collaborating with other aquaculture researchers around the world through emails, phone calls, and yearly meet ups in France, Schwarz et al. found which conditions, like water aeration, flow, light and feeding regimen, reduce cannibalism the most in cobia larvae.
Schwarz is married, with two children, two stepchildren, and two step grandchildren. He looks like a business casual Jimmy Buffett, 20-years-younger. However, Bluetooth headphones sit on his shoulders in lieu of Buffett’s guitar strap. And his button-down is plaid instead of Hawaiian print, though Schwarz did initiate a Hawaiian-Shirt Fridays dress code.
Despite working 300 miles away from Virginia Tech’s main campus in Blacksburg, Schwarz is considered to be a faculty member in their Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, and earned his PhD from VT in 2005. He’s worked in aquaculture for more than 25 years, and has a confidence that matches his experience.
“For me, I don’t see challenges, except for limited time and money, and a lot of things I want to do,” he says. Schwarz was born in Montreal, and lived in Canada until his family moved to the United States when he was 12 years old. He grew up fishing, surfing, and sailing, which piqued his interest in marine biology and led him to a bachelor’s degree in wildlife and fisheries sciences from Texas A&M University in 1989.
He originally got into aquaculture because he liked the idea of using science to produce high-quality seafood, which he’d always loved eating. While earning a master’s of agriculture with an aquaculture focus from A&M, he started interning at a fish farm in Texas called Prime Reds. After completing his master’s, he began full time there, and moved up over a period of seven years, eventually becoming hatchery manager, and then farm and operations manager. During this time, the farm was bought by a new investor, and rechristened Harvestfresh Seafoods. After leaving the farm in 1997, Schwarz started an international aquaculture consulting firm called Quantum Tides Inc., a company he still manages. He came to VSAREC later that year to begin Virginia Tech’s new Marine Aquaculture Program.
In the 19 years since, Schwarz has become a major player in the international aquaculture scene. He’s the former president of the United States Aquaculture Society, and 2013-2014 president of the World Aquaculture Society. Working with colleagues at VSAREC, he has streamlined the farming of many seafood species—like cobia, flounder, hybrid striped bass, pompano, clams and oysters—and shared his findings with Virginia aquaculture companies pro bono, a service aligned with Virginia Tech and Virginia Sea Grant’s joint mission to put science in the hands of the people that need it. As of last year, Schwarz expanded his focus to include ornamental species.
