This project is designed to enable Catalina Sea Ranch (CSR)to utilize and improve upon the results of recent academic research intocryopreservation of mussel larvaeas applied to large-scale commercial sustainable shellfish aquaculture operations, and to initiate efforts to successfully cryopreserve mussel sperm and oocytes. The ability to store cryopreserved mussel larvae over long periods and achieve a high rate of survival after thawing would allow the production of juveniles (spat) year-round, eliminating the difficult task of bringing broodstock into spawning condition out-of-season. This would overcome the seasonal spawning obstacle that currently hobbles the advancement of commercial shellfish aquaculture. Cryopreservation of larvae would provide secure seed-on-demand to shellfish farmers for assuring scheduled harvests and consistent crop production. Aquaculture is the fastest growing sector of food production, a $135 billion industry providing half the seafood consumed worldwide, but research intocryopreservation methods for shellfish embryos, sperm, and larvae has been limited to date. Not only is there significant room for improvement in terms of survival rates, but demonstrations of the potential for cryopreservation technology to improve overall shellfish aquaculture efficiencies remain to be accomplished. Improvements in cryopreservation technology would also benefit selective breeding programs by lowering the cost of banking multiplestrains, while making it easier to share strains between researchers and enabling a wider variety of breeding opportunities to generate new strains. A comprehensive cryopreservation program will benefit from the ability to freeze (and thaw) cells or embryos at a variety of developmental stages - sperm, oocytes, embryos, and larvae. The ability to cryopreserve larvaeis certainly critical for the reasons already mentioned, but the ability to reliably cryopreserve sperm and oocytes affords additional advantages in the effort to generate the new breeds that will be needed to maintain production efficiency in the face of climate change and ocean acidification. The results from Phase I will be applied to CSRs commercial operations capable of annually producing 2.5 million pounds of mussels from its 100-acre ranch located offshore the coast of southern California. Ultimately, CSR will use cryopreservation as a tool to help assure that a steady, sustainable supply of product will be available to its distribution channels year round. It will also be used to streamline the sharing of shellfish strains, facilitate the creation of genetically diverse stocks, and provide protection against catastrophic loss of stocks, all of which will contribute to the enhancement of global food security.
