Center is heart of Lowcountry fishery

BLUFFTON — The remarkable recovery of the red drum in the Lowcountry wasn't just luck. Biologists knew where the game fish roam, what they eat, how and when they spawn. They stocked juvenile fish in the right habitats at the right time.

They learned how from research at the Waddell Mariculture Center.

The center — the heart of fishing along the South Carolina coast — turns 25 years old this month. Already this year, its hatchery tanks and ponds have stocked 130,000 striped bass into the Ashley River to restore the trophy lake catch in the saltwater where it's also native. An additional 40,000 juveniles are being harvested.

The fish are all brood stock descended from the native fish that were trapped when lakes Moultrie and Marion were dammed. The striper went into the hatchery tanks in March; in May, when they came out, red drum went in — an average of 2 million or more are stocked each year. Now 4,000 aggressive cobia are in the tanks, schooling and snapping.

And that's not the core work of the

S.C. Department of Natural Resources center. These fish are studied throughout their lives, tagged and monitored after release partly through DNA testing.

The findings will refine hatching and stocking techniques — ways to maintain the wild stock as more people come to live and fish along the coast. In the case of a catastrophe for a species, a hurricane or contamination, the techniques will allow adult fish to be restored.

Not bad for a place thought of as a hatchery. In one way or another, a lot of the fish in the Lowcountry's live well today are there thanks to Waddell. Saltwater fishing in state waters is an estimated $1 billion per year business, and more anglers are moving inshore because of costs and tightening federal restrictions on offshore catches.

The only thing that hasn't thrived at Waddell is the center itself. For all its economical value, the center gets by making ends meet.

The research is paid for by about $2 million per year in federal grants; the state provides little more than $250,000 in operating money.

It operates with about one-third of the staff it had seven years ago and, like the rest of DNR's Marine Resources division, on about 42 percent of the money appropriated by the state. It's been slated for closure in year after year of budget tightening, and barely hangs on.

"We just try not to ask for anything. We ask for only what we absolutely need," said Al Stokes, center manager. Volunteers have begun an aggressive marketing campaign to draw more private donations. Three vital valves for the tanks recently were replaced with $50,000 in parts paid for by donations and at-cost labor.

They've been doing this for years. In contrast, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission has just collaborated with a group of research partners on a multimillion-dollar, 10-year project to build saltwater hatcheries to maintain stocks for what has become a $5 billion fishing bonanza for that state.

"What we do here is a lot more complicated than I think people realize," Stokes said. "This is a recreation. But it's also a business; it's also an economy. What we're doing is developing tools. We're going to have to have ways to better manage the resource. We're learning more about the movement of the fish, the habitat, the lifestyle. These are tools that are going to be needed in the future."

The big red drum have been fished so relentlessly that as far back as 1981 DNR began putting limits on the catch. By 2000, the species was headed for "Hades in a hand basket," in the words of one biologist. The department used tagging, survey and sampling techniques developed partly at Waddell to convince legislators to tighten the limits.

An estimated 20 times more red drum are caught today than in 1981, and some adults that are pulled from the plentiful Charleston Harbor waters carry the Waddell tag.

The cobia now being hatched at the center will be studied for use as an aquaculture crop, farmed fish whose tasty white meat might take some of the fishing pressure off the wild stock.

Cobia are so popular that their annual spawning runs up Port Royal Sound, which is near Hilton Head Island, draw anglers from across the world and have become a big chunk of the state's saltwater sports revenue. Three-fourths of the cobia now captured in the sound were stocked from Waddell. Its research provided much of what's known about the fish in the wild, helping to manage that catch.

Meanwhile, at the back of Waddell's 50-acre expanse of 70 tanks and more than 20 ponds, shrimp are being grown in a modest greenhouse. The aquaculture research done there has been groundbreaking. It already has spurred start-ups for a $3 million hatchery near Ridgeland and a $10 million hatchery and processing operation in Kingstree.

"South Carolina really is in a position to be very grateful that we have a facility like Waddell," said Mike Able, owner of Haddrell's Point Tackle and Supply in Mount Pleasant and a member of the recreational angler Coastal Conservation Association. "The research done there is pretty incredible. And without Waddell, in this time and economy we probably could not do it."