Six scientists from UMBI's Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB) have published their landmark paper titled "Environmentally Sustainable Land-Based Marine Aquaculture". The paper appears in the Journal of Aquaculture in January [Aquaculture 286 (2009) 2835]. Authors include Dr. Yossi Tal (who has since left UMBI), Dr. Harold J. Schreier, Dr. Kevin R. Sowers, John D. Stubblefield, Dr. Allen R. Place, and Dr. Yonathan Zohar, director of COMB.

The paper describes COMB's solution of a fully self-contained, land-based system for raising commercially important marine fishes, where wastes such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide are detoxified and removed by microbes in both oxygen-containing [aerobic] and oxygen-free [anaerobic] compartments. The system's solid waste is converted to methane which is used to offset the energy cost of the operation. The result is a system that is devoid of environmental contaminants, that can be located in land-based warehouses for optimal distribution of fresh fish, and where conditions can be tailored specifically to grow any marie species including high-value non-native fish. The system solves the problem of both commercial marine fishing and the host of environmental problems caused by farming in coastal and open ocean net pens----providing high quality protein to feed the world's population.