Healthy Earth, Mote Marine Laboratory, Chiles Group wins Gulf Coast Community Foundation Innovation Challenge

MANATEE -- One of Cortez's usually discarded fish, white roe mullet, now could open the floodgates for an empire.

The Healthy Earth-Gulf Coast: Sustainable Seafood System team won the Gulf Coast Community Foundation's first Innovation Challenge, the foundation announced Monday. The team, made up of scientists from Mote Marine Laboratory, Ed Chiles of the Chiles Group restaurants and Sarasota-based Healthy Earth, among other organizations, won $25,000 for their prototype phase of the grant process.

During the prototype phase, the team used the money to improve area fisheries -- an important step to gaining certification from the Marine Stewardship Council, which often opens up a pathway for selling to large or big-box retailers.

The Healthy Earth-Gulf Coast project hopes to "build a sustainable seafood industry with international distribution in the Sarasota-Manatee region while reviving a heritage fishing community and adding new jobs through a value-added processing plant," according to a Healthy Earth release. The project would mitigate negative environmental impacts of discarding white roe mullet while boosting local fishing communities' economies.

"Healthy Earth and our partners are committed to conserving Sarasota Bay fisheries, preventing the underutilization of mullet and building a billion-dollar sustainable seafood industry here on the Gulf Coast," said Chris Cogan, CEO of Healthy Earth and leader of the winning team.

The project can receive up to $375,000 in grant funds from the Gulf Coast Community Foundation since it won. How much the team will receive and what it will be used for isn't determined yet.

"We wanted to make sure from the beginning that there's a community benefit," said Greg Luberecki, spokesman for the Gulf Coast Community Foundation. "The intention and objective is to invest the full funds; it's a matter of the team sitting down with (Cogan) and setting milestones."

Mote Marine Laboratory will conduct a research project through 2017 at Mote Aquaculture Park to test fish meal and oil derived from mullet byproducts as food for freshwater and saltwater fish as a part of the project. Mote scientists hope to start the project by spring 2016.

"Finding new, sustainable ways to feed aquaculture fish is critical for our future," said Kevan Main, a senior scientist at Mote and past president of the World Aquaculture Society. "We have to look at better utilizing products that are not being fully utilized now, such as the mullet from Cortez that are central to this project led by Healthy Earth."

The Healthy Earth-Gulf Coast team's plan fell in line with what Gulf Coast Community Foundation hopes to accomplish with this challenge.

"As a country, we import 90 percent of the seafood we consume, and here in Florida, we buy $2.6 billion of seafood from overseas every year. Healthy Earth-Gulf Coast has laid out a plan that addresses those imbalances, and we think the regional impact could be transformational," Mark Pritchett, CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation, said in a release.

Janelle O'Dea, Herald business reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7095. Follow her on Twitter@jayohday.

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 8:42 PM with the headline "Healthy Earth, Mote Marine Laboratory, Chiles Group wins Gulf Coast Community Foundation Innovation Challenge ."