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Volume 12, No. 1, Spring 02 | Return to Table of Contents
Senior Scientist Rick Goetz will lead MBL's Program in Scientific Aquaculture
The Marine Resources Center (MRC) at the Marine Biological Laboratory added a new Senior Scientist to its staff. Rick Goetz is charged with leading the Center’s Vincent J. Ryan, Sr., Joseph L. Dowling, Sr. Program in Scientific Aquaculture. Goetz moved his research program to the MBL in January. He is based in the 32,000 square-foot MRC building, which houses a collection of warm and cold water organisms used by researchers at the MBL and elsewhere.
Through exploring factors such as an organism’s nutritional and water quality requirements, physiological characteristics, reproductive biology, diseases, and genetic background, the MBL’s Scientific Aquaculture Program aims to develop novel research techniques, and to address problems being faced by both scientific and commercial aquaculture interests. Goetz will be spearheading the Program’s efforts to use DNA technology as a tool to understand the growth, reproduction, and disease resistance in commercially important fish and shellfish. He will also focus on enhancing the MRC’s culture and husbandry of biomedical models such as squid, clams, toadfish, and zebrafish.
“Clams, squid, and toadfish have a long history at the MBL and are very significant models in biomedical research throughout the world,” explained Goetz. “However, there is a lot that we can study that will enhance our ability to provide researchers with sufficient numbers of these models in a healthy condition year-round.”
Goetz also plans to include more fish aquaculture in the program, which currently focuses more on invertebrate models. “While there has been research on some fish species in the past at MBL,” said Goetz, “the focus has tended to be on invertebrate models…My research has been on various fish models including trout, perch, and tuna. So, I will definitely direct some of the Program more towards fish aquaculture.”
In hiring Goetz, the MRC can now apply a high-tech approach to aquaculture. “Rick brings some very important tools and expertise to the MRC for many mariculture and biomedical issues,” said MRC Director Roger Hanlon. “His strong background in comparative physiology and molecular biology dovetails nicely with other research currently being conducted at the MRC.”
Goetz received his Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Wyoming in 1976. He comes to Woods Hole from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Biological Sciences. |
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