Description
Plan, direct, and coordinate hatchery and grow-out operations for fish, shellfish, or aquatic plants in tanks, raceways, cages, or ponds. Manage staff, budgets, and compliance; oversee broodstock, spawning, stocking, feeding, water quality, health management, harvesting, and sales. Ensure biosecurity, environmental stewardship, safety, and efficient, market-driven production.
- • Collect and record growth, production, health, and water quality data.
- • Manage hatcheries and grow-out facilities for fish, shellfish, or aquatic plants.
- • Direct and monitor broodstock selection, spawning, egg incubation, and larval or fry rearing.
- • Plan and oversee stocking, grading, and density management in tanks, raceways, cages, and ponds.
- • Direct and monitor transfers of fingerlings or market-size stock between systems or to buyers.
- • Determine resource allocation and respond to issues such as disease outbreaks, low oxygen, equipment failure, or storms.
- • Select production systems (RAS, flow-through, ponds, cages) and set stocking, feeding, and husbandry schedules.
- • Implement programs to improve hatch rates, survival, growth, and feed conversion while preventing disease.
- • Configure and operate life-support systems, including aeration, oxygenation, filtration, and environmental control automation.
- • Prepare and submit regulatory reports and records required by local, state, and federal agencies.
- • Inspect ponds, tanks, net pens, plumbing, and equipment; schedule and perform maintenance.
- • Maintain financial, operational, inventory, and employment records for the aquaculture operation.
- • Coordinate procurement, feed inventory, biosecurity supplies, logistics, and product marketing.
- • Develop and execute health management plans, including vaccination, diagnostics, and therapeutics under veterinary guidance.
- • Negotiate contracts for the sale, storage, processing, or shipment of aquaculture products.
- • Establish and maintain broodstock programs to meet production goals and genetic standards.
- • Analyze water quality parameters and adjust aeration, feeding, and treatment to optimize performance.
- • Forecast demand and analyze markets to set species mix, cohort sizes, and production cycles.
- • Oversee construction and upgrades of ponds, raceways, cages, buildings, filtration systems, and access roads.
- • Implement sustainable practices, such as effluent management, fallowing, and use of probiotics or vaccines to reduce chemicals.
- • Conduct routine health checks and biosecurity audits to detect pathogens or parasites.
- • Determine species, stocking densities, and harvest schedules based on budgets, incentives, market demand, and facility capacity.
- • Develop, administer, and enforce SOPs for operations, facility maintenance, worker safety, and biosecurity.
- • Direct production activities, including feeding, grading, treatments, water exchanges, and harvesting.
- • Evaluate pricing, sales channels, and value-added processing options.
- • Hire, train, schedule, and supervise aquaculture technicians and seasonal staff.
- • Monitor critical activities such as feeding, aeration, chemical use, harvesting, and transport for compliance with regulations and standards.
- • Continuously monitor environmental conditions (dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH, salinity, ammonia, nitrite) to ensure optimal animal welfare.
- • Secure financing and manage purchases of equipment, feed, seed stock, nets, and supplies.
- • Coordinate traceability, quality assurance, and food safety programs (e.g., HACCP, SQF) for harvested products.
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O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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This site includes information from O*NET by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. Career Clutch has modified some of this information for student readability. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Last reviewed: Jan 2026
