| Aquaculture/Fisheries Facilities |
| Our Facilities |
Extension, Research, and Teaching facilities are located in the
following areas:
|
| The Aquaculture Research Station |
The station sits on 200 acres of land. 113 earthen ponds include a 5 acre reservoir that supplies water to the remaining 112 research ponds. 35 ponds are 0.1 acre in size and 14 of these are covered with bird netting to exclude predators from minnow studies. There are five 0.5 acre ponds for holding and spawning purposes. A 1 acre pond is used for small impoundment demonstration. Finally, seventy-one 0.25 acre ponds provide the bulk of experimental and holding facilities at the station. Water to the reservoir is supplied by two shallow wells. Water may also be supplied directly to most ponds by a deep-water nearly iron-free well. Further research may be conducted in 40 nine foot diameter pools covered with bird net. Originally used for genetics work, this unit is frequently used for nutrition studies and pilot studies with minnows and ornamental fish. A hangar covers 8 holding tanks or vats used for holding, grading, or otherwise processing fish. The vats are 15 feet long by four feet wide by four feet high. Buildings on site include the Aquaculture Equipment Development building, the Aquaculture Research and Demonstration building, the Feed building, the Hatchery, the Maintenance building, the Storage Facility, the Value-Added Development and Demonstration building, Water Chemistry Laboratory, the Station Shop, and two office structures.
|
| The S.J. Parker Agricultural Research Complex |
This complex houses facilities and personnel from both the departments of Agriculture and Aquaculture/Fisheries and a conference room. Aquaculture facilities include offices for professors and researchers, a wet and a dry nutrition laboratory, and a 700 sq. ft. water quality and plankton analysis laboratory. At the
west end of the complex, are the Fish Shop and Boat Barn.
|
| The S. J. Parker Extension Complex |
The office of the Dean of the School of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Human Sciences is located in the complex along with various personnel in each of those departments and the S. A. Haley Auditorium. Offices of Aquaculture and Fisheries Extension personnel stationed in Pine Bluff are here as well as the Fisheries Library and the Fish Health laboratory.
|
| Woodard Hall |
Recently rennovated, Woodard Hall's second floor is now home to
classrooms, computer labs, teaching and graduate student offices,
and administration offices for the Department of Aquaculture and
Fisheries and the Aquaculture/Fisheries Center for Excellence. |
| O.R. Holiday Applied Sciences Building |
Opened in 2001 next to Woodard Hall, the Applied Sciences building houses both Aquaculture and Agriculture facilities. Aquaculture laboratories for dissection and analytical exercises are available in addition to wet laboratories for holding fish experiments in aquaria. Development of a fish museum is in progress.
|
Welcome To The
Aquaculture & Fisheries Page
Please note that the links
in the top horizontal navigation bar will change as you navigate through the
various sections on the left-hand menu.
The Aquaculture/Fisheries Center of Excellence at UAPB is committed to improving profitability on fish farms. New aquaculture equipment and processes are
developed to improve management capabilities and reduce labor. Projects include the development of in-pond grading equipment, a seine reel designed to sanitize harvesting nets,
a seine boat designed to improve the crowding and handling of fish at harvest and a hydraulically-powered trawl system for sampling commercial ponds. The 1800 sq. ft. shop building is equipped with welding and basic metal fabrication tools.
Completed in 2005, this laboratory is designed to accommodate research and demonstration in the areas of hatching fish and water quality. The facility is divided into two dry labs and two wet labs that can be combined or separated in a variety of permutations to allow experimentation with temperature variation from lab to lab, depending upon species under
investigation. 
The oldest and largest building at the station (5400 sq. ft.), it is equipped with its own deep water well and houses a variety of tanks and systems. Catfish are hatched here for station
studies. Experimental work with innovative hatching systems for a variety of minnows and goldfish is
done here. Fish are housed for teaching at UAPB and for Vo-Ag classes across the state of Arkansas. Nutrition studies
utilize a recirculation system to test fish and diets under different temperatures.
Built in 2000, the Value Added Product
Demonstration building is a multi-purpose structure with both research and extension objectives. The laboratory portion of the building is a food processing/kitchen lab where catfish, shrimp and crayfish are developed into new edibles by altering protein structure or simply utilizing innovative recipes with the normal state of the product. A second portion of the building provides and extension conference room that doubles as a
breakroom for research station personnel on a daily basis. The building also provides shower facilities and the station main office.
Finally the VAPD serves as the station communications hub. A
fiber optic line provides communication from the main campus
to the VAPD. Wireless bridges provide communication to the
rest of the station buildings (including IP phones, internet
and the department network).
This building
houses state-of-the-art chemical analysis machinery. Geared to perform a variety of tests of water chemistry parameters, the laboratory houses computers,
spectrophotometers and fume hoods.
Fish nutrition research at UAPB addresses the development of diets and feeding strategies for baitfish, channel catfish, hybrid striped bass, pacu, largemouth bass and tilapia. Special interests include lipid nutrition, broodstock nutrition, nutritional immunology, nutritional aspects of stress physiology and the effects of fish consumption on human health. The nutrition dry laboratory (1000 sq. ft.) contains a walk-in cooler, freezer and ultra-cold freezer for sample storage, equipment for diet preparation, and instrumentation for feed and tissue analysis including protein, lipid, dry matter ash and fiber analysis. The wet lab (1000 sq. ft.) is equipped with a variety of aquaria that may be operated in either flow-through or recirculation fashion.
Support facilities for natural fisheries research include a 2256 sq. ft. laboratory and a 2400 sq. ft. boat storage facility. The Fish Shop includes a wet lab with five independent recirculation systems (eight 20 gallon aquaria per system) and twenty 170 liter flow-through polytanks in a light-controlled environment. There is a large equipment storage area that includes backpack electrofishing equipment, state-of-the-art tagging equipment, ploidy manipulation equipment, and more; and a processing laboratory that includes wet sample areas, standard microscopy, and an image analysis station. The Boat Barn contains three boom-mounted electrofishing boats and five all-purpose aluminum boats of all sizes. Collection gears of many types are available, including gill, trap, and hoop nets, trawls, seines, purse seines, and ichthyoplankton tow nets. The Boat Barn is enclosed by a gated fence and has ample parking for vehicles and boats.
UAPB has four disease diagnostic laboratories that provide a variety of services to the aquaculture industry. The Lonoke Diagnostic laboratory is at the center of the U.S. bait and feeder fish industry. The Lake Village Diagnostic Laboratory serves the bulk of the Arkansas catfish industry. The Newport Diagnostic Laboratory serves a diverse group of fish producers located in the Northeastern part of Arkansas. The lab on the UAPB campus in Pine Bluff provides advanced diagnostic services (histology, quantitative PCR, pathogen identification) to the other laboratories, assists with research related fish health problems from the labs and ponds of the Aquaculture/Fisheries Center and handles a significant number of cases from out of state. The UAPB laboratory is APHIS approved to inspect fish for export and is one of the most active labs in the APHIS Farm Certification Program. Together these four laboratories handles more than 2000 cases per year submitted by more than 300 farms in 27 states (2003).
The S.A. Haley auditorium--located in the S.J. Parker 1890 Extension Building--is used for presentations, keynote speeches,
and safety meetings. This auditorium provides seating up to 122
people with wired network connections for all stations. This
allows for easy access to the internet or school network.
