Downtown Fisheries?
Advances may make fish farming a healthy prospect, even for inner cities
By Janet Raloff
An economic renaissance is apparent in much of Baltimore, including the cobblestoned, 225-year-old Fells Point neighborhood that hugs a northern edge of the city’s Inner Harbor. Some 18th-century storefronts display antiques, others feature homemade ethic cuisine. Construction on towering new hotels booms overhead.
Inside a nondescript, greenish-beige waterfront warehouse, marine biologists are laboring over their own contribution to this area’s economic revitalization. The ambitious goal of these researchers at the University of Maryland’s Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB) is to redesign aquaculture, bringing teeming tanks of seafood to urban centers. Though they’re starting with Baltimore, the next site could be Detroit, Iowa City, or even Phoenix.