The Commerce Department initiative is aimed at re-establishing the United States as a net exporting nation for fisheries products. That could create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and generate billions of dollars of new business.

Gulf Marine Institute of Technology’s large four-platform complex in the Gulf of Mexico, which is in 72 feet of water 10 miles offshore of Port O’Connor, provided UTMB with a research and development center. University researchers will monitor the growth of the fish and the quality of the water.

“The Gulf of Mexico, especially along the Texas and Louisiana coasts with their highly productive waters, rich fish fauna and thousands of oil platforms, represents the most ideal coastal area of the United States in which to pioneer offshore sea-farming,” said Dr. Phillip G. Lee, an associate professor at UTMB and lead project investigator. “We project that the UTMB and GMIT research alliance, based in Texas waters, will play a key role in this pioneering effort.’

Lee is director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Resource Center for Ceph-alopods, a UTMB program that has been providing model organisms for biomedical research for the last 25 years.

Dr. Edwin Cake, director and chief science officer of Gulf Marine Institute of Technology, said the institute was excited about the collaborative effort.

“We hope that by integrating our sponsored resources and research efforts, we will accelerate and strengthen the technical and economic viability of sea farming,” he said. “We have started with attempting to rapidly raise more than 5,000 cobia in our systems in Galveston. The potential of sea farming in the Gulf is tremendous and could create a major new industry.”

Cobia on average grow an inch a week and weigh 20 pounds in less than a year. By developing new systems and technology that domesticate these fast-growing Gulf fish and raising them like cattle, it would be possible to export new methods to produce reasonably priced, protein-rich nutrition, researchers said.