Summer Field Program 2008
Opportunity of a Lifetime: My Graduate Adventure
Jason Lemus
Fish and fishing have and will always be my major interests; therefore, I have centered my graduate experience around fish culture and live feeds culture, and various fish tagging and collection endeavors. However, my undergraduate experience was not riddled with incessant studying and office visits with professors, nor fishing. Rather, too much of my earlier time as an undergraduate was spent doing non-scholastic and non-enriching practices totally unrelated to my life-long interests. Luckily, life is forgiving and I found my path while I was completing my final two years of a B.S. in Forest Resources and Conservation at the University of Florida.
My graduate studies have required an entirely different approach, which has enriched my life’s practices and work and relaxation ethics. I completed a M.S. from the Department of Coastal Sciences in 2001 focusing on the extensive (low density) culture of copepods for their use as food for the larvae of red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus). My research demonstrated two ways to increase copepod production in the large outdoor aquaculture tanks at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. My dissertation research has focused on biological aspects of the local copepod Acartia tonsa that can help improve intensive (high density) culture techniques. I have found that higher copepod density results in increased cannibalism, and reduced egg production, development rate and survival. Copepod size also affects cannibalism, and providing sufficient quantities of algae for copepods to eat reduces cannibalism.
Other research areas and endeavors have been assisting in collection and tagging of numerous fish species, general aquaculture husbandry, broodstock maturation, larval fish culture and large-scale culture of copepods. The value of my graduate experience has been not only in the challenge of answering some interesting biology questions, but also in the process of becoming a PhD and the many personal and professional challenges it affords. Not the least, there have been many opportunities to meet, collaborate and learn from many interesting people here at GCRL and elsewhere. Throughout it all, I have realized that I am experiencing the opportunity of a lifetime.
Presentation Slides
