By: Marie Tarnowski

The aquaculture team at CEI has been trying to successfully breed sharknose gobies for over a year.  On January 31st, we had our first clutch of eggs hatch!  After adjusting their diet the broodstock pair have begun to spawn every 2 weeks.  After the eggs are laid on the inside of a piece of PVC tubing, the male sharknose goby protects the nest for about a week.  The eggs then hatch and are larvae for 45 days.  Each clutch of eggs contains around 200 eggs and we hope to successfully rear 30 per clutch.

The sharknose goby is a cleaner fish, native to The Bahamas, that eats parasites off fish.  With the use of the sharknose goby we hope to remove the use of formalin, a chemical that is damaging to the environment as well as fish, as a parasite remover.  We will be stocking tanks that contain juvenile cobia with sharknose gobies and comparing their cleaning effectiveness to the use of formalin.  If the gobies are as effective as formalin as parasite removal we will begin to use the sharknose gobies, that have been bred in the lab, as parasite removers in cobia grow-out tanks as well as in our offshore aquaculture cage.

More videos and pictures to come!