Todd Blacher

A.I.E. is proud to have our Aquaculture Expert, Todd Blacher, consult with you regarding your insurance needs, risk management and more. Mr. Blacher is recipient of an M.S. in Mariculture and a B.A. in Aquatic Biology. He has experience in managing and consulting services for Aquaculture establishments and has published many articles and presentations on his research.

Mr. Blacher is an expert in Aquaculture with specific strength in super-intensive and hyper-intensive culture systems that require minimal or zero water exchange. These types of aquaculture systems permit the producer to increase output per area and reduce waste water discharge. He has 17 years of experience working in the field of aquaculture and 10 years of experience in aquaculture management and consulting, helping companies increase their productivity while at the same time reducing environmental impact and chronic/acute pathological events.

Mr. Blacher has worked on many domestic and international aquaculture projects, including operations in Ecuador, China, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Honduras. He has helped companies start from scratch, completely designing farms / aquaculture production systems from the ground up, employing and training personnel in high-tech aquaculture technique. He has also helped many companies upgrade existing farms to improve productivity, implement minimal water use technologies, as well as implement biosecure or specific pathogen-free technologies.

Mr. Blacher has managed fully integrated aquaculture projects as large as 500 hectares in size, which have employed up to 400 people. He has successfully transferred improved aquaculture technologies to remote and rural third world environments, and also worked domestically in the U.S. in cooperation with well recognized institutions such as Texas A&M University and Virginia Tech University.

Mr. Blacher earned a B.A. degree from UC Santa Barbara in Marine Biology, and a M.S. degree in Mariculture from Texas A&M University, specializing in shrimp aquaculture super-intensive re-circulating technologies. He is fluent in Spanish and comfortable in Mandarin Chinese. He has published in scientific journals in the field of aquaculture and has been an invited speaker at various aquaculture conferences to present on implementation of improved technologies and successes.

Mr. Blacher’s recent projects include managing a fully integrated super-intensive tilapia aquaculture company in Honduras, consulting and start up of a hyper-intensive shrimp production facility in Virginia, management and technical upgrades of a marine ornamental fish farm in Puerto Rico, and the design, construction, and start up of a fully integrated super-intensive marine shrimp aquaculture facility in rural China.

Education

· M.S. Mariculture, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi (1997-1999)

· B.A. Aquatic Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara (1989-1993)