Wave a hand over one of several large fiberglass vats in the cellar of the Marine Research Center at the University of Maine in Orono and young clownfish swarm to the surface. Any kid will tell you the goggle-eyed fry, orange- and white-striped, just like the animated film star Nemo, are cute. They are also forerunners of a cash crop, one that could launch a pair of careers and establish a new industry in Maine.

The squirmers were born from a joint effort between two UM grad students, Chad Callan and Soren Hansen, with the support of Dr. David Townsend, director of the School of Marine Sciences. Fish, students and faculty are all bound in a four-year effort to launch a tropical aquaculture business – raising valuable, exotic saltwater fish species for sale to what is generally called the marine ornamental market.

The project requires Hansen and Callan to devise ways to coax wild fish to breed in captivity, to nurture and feed larvae that are translucent, almost microscopic and to do it all at a cost the market will bear. The first phase involves raising species, like clownfish, already commonly bred in captivity. The goal is to expand to higher-value types of fish that have thus far confounded the industry’s limited attempts at captive breeding.

If successful, the business could garner a share of what is estimated to be more than a $200 million a year market. Even more important to Hansen and Callan: it could help undercut the industry’s current source for many exotic fish – wild populations.

“People buy saltwater fish because they love and want to support the ocean,” Callan said. “But they are actually contributing to the demise of coral reefs.”

The film “Raising Nemo” told the tale of a young clownfish taken from a reef and sold into the marine ornamentals market. Although clownfish are able to be bred in captivity, 98 percent of ornamentals sold are captured in the wild through methods which tend to kill fish, reef coral and plant life.

Industry estimates suggest less than half the fish captured survive to reach the point of sale. Lousy odds from a fish’s point of view, they also suggest an industry in dire need of revamping. Callan and Hansen recognized the situation was ripe for change and with opportunity.

The 30-year-old Callan is a New Jersey native who began working in tropical fish shops as a teenager. Hansen is a 29-year-old native of Norway, lured to Maine by the university’s marine biology program. The two met while working toward master’s degrees. Then Callan jetted to Hawaii to work in the breeding operations of a large commercial tropical fish supplier.

Townsend reeled him back, proposing a doctoral program tied to the process of developing a groundbreaking aquaculture company. For the university, it would provide in-house breeding of research stock while expanding the boundaries of an already innovative aquaculture program. For Callan and Hansen, financial backing from UM combined with a $10,000 seed grant from the Maine Technology Institute provided a springboard, not only to two doctorates, but to what could potentially be – mother nature willing – an industry-altering company.

So the pair set to paying dues. Improvising much of the necessary equipment, they crafted an elaborate plumbing system to manufacture, circulate and filter saltwater. (The project included the addition of a special room to the research center.) They sought a food source small enough to feed the minuscule fish larvae – they settled on a type of copepod, a sort of microscopic brine shrimp. Both students are on call 24 hours a day, and computers monitoring water temperature, salinity and other conditions sound an alarm in their apartments if conditions change.

Those conditions are carefully designed, in part, to reset the fish’s biological clocks to urge year-round spawning.

“When you’re doing a four-year grad degree, you can’t wait three years for a fish to spawn,” Hansen said.

We’ll stick with them through the process – learn from their challenges and keep an eye on how the fortunes of risk and reward treat these talented, young pioneers.