The
Pulaski County 4-H Livestock Club was not quite as enthusiastic about their
summer trip this year because we were not planning to leave the state of
Virginia. After having traveled through
Kansas, Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, staying close to home did
not hold much appeal! Little did they
realize how much their home state has to offer and how diverse we are in the
field of agriculture.
Day
4:
Just
a short walk along the boardwalk at the Hampton Marina Hotel lies the Virginia
Seafood Agriculture Research and Extension Center (AREC). The center is located on the Hampton River,
very close to the Chesapeake Bay.
Steve
Urick spoke with us about the research that is going on at the center to
include ways to grow difficult or impossible to raise fish such as Tuna,
Grouper, Snapper, etc. They are
developing culture methods to produce Copepod Nauplii (babies) to feed these
high value fish larvae. Copepods are a
group of small crustaceans found in nearly every fresh and saltwater habitat. The smallest look like a speck of dust and
live most everywhere in the ocean in numbers too vast to count. The copepods are a key link in ocean food
webs. The center wants to “grow” the
copepods to feed the fish larvae in a farm raised fish environment.
Other
areas of research include:
How
to improve and stabilize the environment of the farm raised oyster beds so as
to prevent massive die offs of oyster larvae.
What
to feed and at what rate to feed Clownfish so as to get the bright orange color
in the Clownfish.
Safe
and effective ways to ensure food grown aquaponically is free of health risks
and safe for human consumption.
Steve
also showed the group a live horseshoe crab and a vial of the blood that had
been drawn from the crab. Their blood is
blue and is valued at over $60,000 per gallon.
Pharmaceutical companies use the horseshoe crab blood to test the
sterility of drugs, vaccines, medical devices and implants. A synthetic product has been developed but
needs more time for testing. This will
reduce the need to bleed the horseshoe crab
From the waterfront there in Hampton you
can also see the Norfolk Navy Base which is the largest naval base in the
world.
Virginia Beach was our next destination
so we boarded the bus and headed that way.
Our summer trips have never afforded us much downtime, so rather than
schedule another tour for the afternoon, we took the afternoon off to enjoy the
beach. Our hotel was on the beach and so
we spent the day swimming and enjoying the sun and the sand. During our time on the beach, the group was
amazed at the number of ships transporting cargo containers passed by on the
near horizon. We learned that the Port
of Virginia is one of the busiest ports on the East Coast. Its well-connected railway allows a third of
its cargo to arrive and depart by rail, representing the largest percentage of
any East Coast port.
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| Enjoying the ocean |
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| Dinner at the Wyndham hotel |
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| Girls posing with Neptune, God of the Sea |
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| One of our littlest travelers enjoying her ice cream |
After a day in the salty air, a delicious
dinner at the hotel and ice cream on the boardwalk, the group was ready to call
it a day. Day 5 would begin our journey
home.
