Comments (0)Bright Light
November 6, 2009Andrew A. Buerger
Publisher
There’s an old saying, perhaps dating back to Moses: “You’re never a prophet in your own land.”
I discovered one downtown that I hadn’t known existed.
I had the pleasure of sitting across the dinner table from world-renowned oceanographer Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau.
Before our dinner conversation, I was expecting a depressing update on how bad off our environment is. But right from the start he pointed across to a man sitting a few seats away from me. The younger Cousteau, who’s become a world leading environmentalist and ocean steward, commented on how that man on the other side of the table was an incredibly important person in the effort to create a more sustainable earth, particularly in the effects of over-fishing our seas.
The man spoke with an accent, so I assumed he was in Mr. Cousteau’s French posse. He, along with others, had solutions to our many environmental problems.
The dinner was arranged by the Stevenson University Speaker Series, and gave about 20 people a chance to hear directly from Mr. Cousteau before his lecture at the Meyerhoff.
After dinner I approached the man with the accent to see what he was working on that was important enough to be singled out by the ocean environmentalist.
Dr. Yonathan Zohar is no Frenchman. The Jerusalem native is director of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. He lives right here in Pikesville and is doing cutting-edge work that may save the world. He’s a prophet in our land. I had to see his work for myself. (Zohar means “radiance” in Hebrew.)
I followed up with a visit to his facility at the Columbus Center right there in the Inner Harbor. The Jewish man had a mission to save the blue crab. He was able to get them to spawn, grow to a decent size and then be released into the Chesapeake Bay.
He claims success in this endeavor, but the funding dried up, so he’s phasing out that program. That’s too bad for our state.
For Sustainable Aquaculture 2.0, he set his sights on raising commercial fish in Baltimore City tap water. He’s done it. The Center of Marine Biology (COMB) recently sold 4,000 pounds of bronzini to area restaurants. Talk about fresh; it’s hours from swimming to the table; a huge drop in carbon footprint comes about by not flying them in from Europe.
Dr. Zohar hopes to set up these fish farms in Baltimore warehouses and provide healthy, tasty and sustainable fish farms in places like Topeka, Kan. Investors are seriously looking at buying his patented technology that would allow a “farmer” anywhere in the country to produce 200 tons of fish in one operation.
The folks at Whole Foods have a huge interest, and stake, in what the Baltimore-based institute is doing. We’re depleting the world’s ocean of fish. Current farm-raised fish are not environmentally sound because they pollute the water they live in; the current methods of farmed fish don’t taste as good and don’t contain the important omega fatty acids.
But when Dr. Zohar perfects the process, places such as Whole Foods could get a steady supply of quality fish that are free from things like PCBs and mercury that exist in today’s “healthy” wild stock.
The married Jewish father of four kids (who went to Beth Tfiloh Day School) has nearly worked out all the kinks so the fish taste good, are healthy, don’t pollute the environment and don’t require 3 pounds of feeder fish to produce 2 pounds of edible product.
That brings me to Zohar 3.0: algae. The Hebrew University graduate’s secret is feeding the fish nutrient-rich algae, instead of the fish that consume it. COMB grows the algae.
Algae consume carbon dioxide, the same stuff that’s being blamed for global warming. Power plants are clamoring for the stuff to naturally lower their carbon emissions. That should make tons of algae around the country.
Oh, by the way, the people at the Department of Defense are clamoring for it because they can make jet fuel from it. Non-polluting, non-Middle Eastern, global cooling stuff.
Right here from a nice Israeli transplant.