University of Southern California
USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences  
 
Aquaculture of Marine Mollusks
Veliger

Worldwide, the largest production by aquaculture for an individual species is from the Pacific cupped oyster, Crassostrea gigas, with over 4 million metric tonnes grown per year in the ocean.

Photo (far left) and diagram of a larval stage of the Pacific oyster, C. gigas. Our work with these larval forms includes:

  1. Studies of nutrient uptake from seawater by bacteria-free ("axenic") larvae (Manahan, 1989; 1990)
  2. Studies of the nutritional requirements of larvae (Welborn and Manahan, 1995)
  3. The physiological bases of growth and hybrid vigor (Pace et al., 2006; Hedgecock et al. 2007).

Photo (right) shows the veliger-stage larva of the red abalone, Haliotis rufescens. This larval form was raised in the laboratory from a fertilized egg. These larvae are non-feeding during development.

We have investigated the energy metabolism of this species during larval development (Jaeckle & Manahan, 1992; Moran and Manahan, 2003) and during metamorphosis (Shilling et al., 1996).