Marine High School won the Grand Prize, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award, and the Director-General of the Fisheries Agency Award at the National Student Research Presentation Competition!

At the “33rd National Fisheries and Marine High School Student Research Conference,” held on December 12–13 at Aichi Prefectural Mitani Fisheries High School, three students from the Resource Development Course in the Fisheries Resources Department at Niigata Prefectural Marine High School—a participating institution of the COI-NEXT main hub—won the Grand Prize. The title of their project was “The 2023–2024 ‘Echigo Wine Flounder’ Development Project: Aiming to Build a Brand for Aquacultured Flounder Produced by Marine High Schools, Starting with Feed Production.”

At Kaiyo High School, we are conducting a project aimed at establishing a brand for farmed flounder by utilizing grape pomace—a byproduct of wine production—as an original feed ingredient. In this presentation, we reported on research findings that focus on grape pomace as a feed ingredient, with the goal of improving the quality of farmed flounder through the utilization of underutilized biomass. This is the first attempt in Japan to use grape pomace as feed for farmed flounder. Currently, a patent application is pending for the developed feed, and we plan to submit a paper on our research findings to an international academic journal. Furthermore, we plan to conduct demonstration experiments and work toward practical implementation not only in Japan but also overseas.

We are advancing research and development on the project “Development of Resource-Recycling-Based Land-Based Aquaculture Technology” in collaboration with the Marine High School, a participating institution in the COI-NEXT main hub. We will continue to strengthen our collaboration with the aim of establishing resource-recycling-based land-based aquaculture technology.

To all the students at Marine High School: Congratulations on your awards!