SWEETWATER SYSTEMS

Arizona's oldest Sweetwater is believed to have been an 1868 stage
station not far east of where the Gila River is crossed by Interstate 10.
The newest Sweetwater is about 15 miles from there, a fish farm at
Lone Butte, out in the middle of the wide nowhere between South
Mountain and the Sierra Estrella Wilderness Area.

Those familiar with state aquaculture will remember the isolated site on
the Gila River Indian Reservation as the place where earlier operators
had an algal farm and a few raceways.  It's more than that now. The
present owner and operator is Bill Steinke, a large and genial man who
looks like he would have been right at home running a stagecoach
station.  (The closest he came to that was running a hardware store on
the Waianae coast outside Honolulu.)  He was a Navy submariner and
diver who then became savvy around shrimp and fish ponds during
more than 20 years of manufacturing and installing plastic liners, mostly
in Asia.

 That's how I came to Arizona,  Steinke explains.   The company I was
with started working with Tony Porti at the UofA's Maricopa Agricultural
Center on pond lining.  One thing just led to another.   Sweetwater
Systems actually specializes in design, construction and management
of multi-use water systems using high density polyethylene liners.  This
ties in with the College of Agriculture's focus, pioneered by MAC, on the
multiple use of pre-irrigation water for fish farming.

Steinke's past in aquaculture is in the photograph albums in his office,
where he can show you aerial pictures of enormous farms of thousands
of shrimp ponds in Southeast Asia, those places laid out like giant
checkerboards. His future you can see for yourself at Sweetwater's
production farm at Lone Butte: 66 fenced acres with ten lined half-acre
ponds, a one-acre lined pond, and the concrete tanks and raceways
from the older operations, now also lined.  There's a metal building
containing offices,  a dozen Red Ewald nursery tanks and a water-
quality lab, adjacent to a two-story storage building.  Well water runs at
about 80o F. and can be pumped at 600 gpm.

"I've got about 60,000 tilapia, up to a pound and a half," Steinke says,
"and 30,000 catfish up to two pounds, and about 6,000 striped bass up
to a pound and a quarter.  I'm flying the fry in now; I think it has tended
to hurt the industry when you have to truck 'em in.  And what I'm after is
a continuous growth cycle so I've got a continuous supply of market
sized fish, instead of like the guys who raise 'em in batches and have to
harvest a whole batch all at once."

Given the water temperature, he's thinking about ways to cover some of
the ponds for winter production of warmwater species.  Water quality is
tested frequently, particularly for dissolved oxygen.  One of the reasons
he preaches the use of high density polyethylene liners for aquatic
farming, in addition to eliminating leakage and erosion, is that there is
no soft-bottom microbial oxygen sink.   Hey,  he says.   Keeping the O2
high without a lot of pumping is money in the bank. 

Product marketing, the shoal upon which many fish farms have
foundered, holds no fears for Steinke.  His commercial target is the
ethnic live-fish market in greater Phoenix and it does not hurt that he
speaks several Asian languages.   We're a half-hour away by live-haul
truck.  We can harvest selectively by size, hold the animals in a purge
tank for several days, and deliver to the customer's front door. I'm not
worried about the marketing.  I love it. 

Sweetwater's landscape is a bit bare, but he has just planted 25 trees
and 200 shrubs, and built four ramadas.   So you can sit around and go
fee fishing.  From the 4th of July on we're open to the public, year
round, sunup to sunset."  Current prices are $2.50/lb for tilapia and
catfish, $3.00/lb for striped bass.   You can also buy fish in the round at
the farm gate.

Besides Steinke, there are two other employees: Jack Story and Kiflom
Kelati.   All three men live on site.  Steinke's wife of 30 years is still in
Houston with their youngest; they have three grown children, one a
fireman back in Hawaii.

After being born and raised in Wisconsin and then surviving several
busy careers in Asia and the Central Pacific, why has Steinke decided to
settle in Arizona.  With a perfectly straight face he says,  Well, I like to
work in Third World countries."  Then he grins.

NEW AQUACULTURE EXTENSIONIST

As the University's Environmental Research Laboratory joins the College
of Agriculture, through the newly expanded Department of Soil, Water
and Environmental Science, Kevin Fitzsimmons now gets to wear three
hats.  (Triple chapeau are becoming the norm at ERL: see the next
item.)

Kevin, the lab's well known fish scientist, is now trisected among
research (ERL), teaching (on campus) and the extension service, which
has lacked an aquaculturist for some time.   I'm sure looking forward to
it,  he says.   It kind of formalizes what I've already been doing. 

For years Kevin has been one of the most active fish researchers in
Arizona, particularly with tilapia (although he has cultured a remarkable
variety of critters for the Disney exhibits in Florida).  During that time he
has provided advice to numerous fish farmers, although that was not
exactly in his job description.   Sure,  he smiles.   Everybody knows I've
been doing that working with high school teachers, answering
questions about koi in the back yard or fish ponds on farms, and
working with traditional aquaculturists. 

Kevin and ERL's Ed Glenn have been teaching freshwater and marine
algae courses for the past three spring semesters both have done a lot
of that kind of work in Hawaii and Kevin has assisted Don Lightner
with some of the latter's aquaculture classes.  Now Kevin also has been
assigned a freshman level Environmental Science class.

But he's also fast out of the blocks with the extension service.   First
thing I did,  he says,  even though the job didn't formally exist, was to
help out with the annual aquaculture meeting of high school ag
vocational teachers, which was up in Springerville this year.  Dedicated
bunch.  There were teachers from Colorado and Utah as well as
Arizona. 

What else is he up to?   Well, I'm about to make my third trip to
Colombia, where they're working on a big new farm for red hybrid
tilapia.  Tilapia are going bonkers in down there; they're flying a lot into
Miami.  And then I have a grant to study the potential of urban wildife
habitat at the Ocotillo power plant in Phoenix, using salty blowdown
water from their cooling tower.   What does that have to do with fish?
(...pause...)  Well, actually,  Kevin says.  absolutely nothing. 

PROFILE:  MARY OLSEN

Few botanists can wear the three hats of Dr. Mary Olsen.  She is not
only the aquatic agronomist for the U of A's Environmental Research
Laboratory, looking at the benefits of irrigating crop plants with fishpond
waste water.  She also teaches at the COA's Department of Soil, Water
and Environmental Science, and pursues bio-remedial detective work
for such electrical power companies as Arizona's Salt River Project.

 The bio-remediation we're investigating for them," she explains,  is
sequestering carbon by growing halophytic plants.  The carbon that can
be fixed in plant and microbial biomass counts as credits against the
carbon dioxide put out in stack gasses.  In other words, new plantings
can balance out some of their carbon emissions."  Halophytes are good
candidates for this because they can be grown on non-arable land and
in almost any water quality, including full-strength seawater.  And ERL
has likely done more large-scale halophyte research than anybody else.

How is she doing on aquaculture waste water?   Not very well," Mary
admits.   Last winter our funding ran out on studying how much it
contributes to plant growth.  We're following the work Dr. Aecio D'Silva
is doing out at the Marana Research Farm he's got tilapia back in the
ditches there, repeating his trials on cotton irrigation and we're
comparing that water with well water.  But we need a lot more than
that."

As every fish farmer knows, there has been talk for decades on the
benefits of adding fish fertilizer to irrigation water.   That's the problem,"
Mary says forcefully.   The talk has been just that.  Talk.  Nobody has
any real numbers.  I don't think anybody else is working on it right now,
not in the Southwest, at least, and not in open field irrigation.  New
Mexico may be doing something, but with closed systems."

What is needed for her kind of research, she says, is an active farm in
southern Arizona with the right kind of setup to integrate fish production
with crop irrigation.   It's important," she says,  that it be a farm that's in
business to stay in business.  We need to do replicated trials with the
proper control treatments to be able to say with confidence what the
benefits and constraints are to integrating aquaculture and agriculture."

As of the first of July, the Environmental Research Lab, headquartered at
Tucson International Airport, is part of the COA's Department of Soil,
Water and Environmental Science.  Olsen, like other ERL faculty, will
ping-pong between the laboratory and the main campus.   I'll be
teaching lab courses and introductory environmental science, and
continue to help teach mycology."
  
Busy days for a lady born in Idaho, raised in Alabama, schooled in
Colorado and the U of A, where she earned her PhD in 1982.  Olsen is
married to a Tucson stockbroker and has two grown daughters, one a
grant writer and the other in the U of A Medical School.  The family has
lived in Tucson for 24 years.   She clearly loves her work but is just as
clearly frustrated by the hiatus in fishfarm waste water research.

 We'd really like to be able to answer some of these basic questions,"
she says.   The big problem is finding the right people in the right place
who are interested in cooperating with us."

Any takers?

ENIGMA

Editor's Note:

It is not entirely clear what is happening to the Arizona Aquaculture
Association.  Or if anything is happening to it, or even if there is an
Arizona Aquaculture Association for anything to happen to.

On and off for weeks, we have tried In vain to find somebody who can
or will tell us.  This may have changed by press time, but we doubt it.
The listed Officers of the Association are mostly those left over from
1994.  But Officers are elected by a Board of Directors, who themselves
must first be elected by the Membership at the Annual Meeting.  To the
best of our knowledge, there are no 1995 Members.  There has been no
Annual Meeting.  There has been no naming of a Board.  There have
been no Officers named by a Board.  Does the Association still exist? 
It's all very confusing.

Summertime in Arizona, warmwater fish crops burgeon.  Growers are
too busy to fool around with political stuff.  But we submit two
arguments:  First, Arizona truly needs an aquaculture association or a
cooperative or a whatever, by any name or charter.  Second, no such
organization can survive without strong participation by the warmwater
growers of Southern Arizona, those on and near the Gila River Indian
Reservation and the Hyder Valley.

Do you have an opinion on this?  Should there be a meeting to talk
about it?  Phone, fax or write Assistant Dean Merle Jensen at the College
of Agriculture.  Phone (520) 621-5243; Fax (520) 621-7196; Mail: COA,
Forbes Bldg 306, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ, 85721.