CC Reid discusses her mission to document Caribbean aquaculture.
By Farah Vallecillo
Original Air Date: May 16, 2025
Host: Florida juts right into the middle of the Caribbean, and our peninsula shares a lot with that region. A young researcher and fish farmer from Manatee County is recognizing that, sailing on her Morgan 24 from Sarasota to Bahamas, Puerto Rico and all the rest of the Antilles to document aquaculture in the region. WSLR News reporter Farah Vallecillo caught up with her this week.
Bailey Mull (left) and CC Reid (right.)
Farah Vallecillo: CC Reid intertwines her passion for sustainability and the environment with her family’s history in fish farming. CC recently graduated from university, and now she and her mate Bailey Mull are sailing their Morgan 24 sailboat from Sarasota to Caribbean islands. Their mission: conduct research and take a census of fish farms to contribute to mariculture communities, benefiting fish farmers and scientists.
CC, age 24, moved to Manatee County, alongside her father’s mariculture businesses, in Massachusetts. John Reid grew up in Badenton and is running a tilapia hatchery and aquaponics business in suburban Manatee County.
Here’s CC Reid:
CC Reid.
CC Reid: I grew up on my dad’s fish farm, but he had a different farm in Massachusetts, and that’s the farm that I grew up on. He bought this farm relatively recently—like four years ago. He’s been down here, farming here, for the past years. So I didn’t grow up here as a kid, but I’ve been doing this stuff my whole life, and now it’s based out of Florida.
FV: Her childhood experiences in aquaculture led her to study agriculture and environmental studies at the University of Vermont, where she recently graduated.
CR: We are doing research on ocean farms but not necessarily fish. Things like seaweed, oysters, conch—anything that you can grow in the ocean.
Bailey Mull.
FV: CC met Bailey Mull on a Facebook group for sailors. She bought the used boat in the area, and together, they spent four months planning, preparing and fixing their exploration vessel. Now they are making their way down Florida’s west coast and out to the Caribbean islands. Their goal: documenting practices, challenges, and successes of fish farms all over the Greater and Lesser Antilles.
CR: We’re going to try to get as much data as possible. There’s not an overwhelming amount of mariculture farms in the Caribbean, but our goal is to figure out how many there are, what they’re doing and how successful they’ve been, what challenges they faced, what kind of support they need—that sort of stuff.
CC and Bailey are still in Southwest Florida, and they will be navigating from island to island. From the bustling fish farms of Puerto Rico to the smaller, community operations in the Bahamas, CC plans to meticulously document her findings from the Antilles.
CR: We’re going all the way down to Trinidad and Tobago, and we’ll go through the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles. Puerto Rico, D.R., Jamaica, the Bahamas—I could name them all, but—all of them. [laugh]
FV: She will interview local farmers, learning about their techniques, sustainability practices and the environmental impacts of their operations.
Once her research is done, CC hopes to publish her findings and share them with the fish farmers themselves. CC sees the value of her work is not in her findings alone but also in sharing that knowledge with those in the industry who helped contribute to her research.
CR: We have two deliverables that we’re scheming on. The first will be a full scientific report of all the data that we collect. That’ll be interview questions and responses as well as water quality data. The synthesized data report will be the first thing. And we’re also hoping to do a documentary film surrounding mariculture farmers within the Caribbean. That’ll be focused on not so much our sailing journey but more so what these farmers do, how they got their—telling their stories, hopefully making something that gets people inspired in mariculture—showing it to the world as an option of a lifestyle.
Photos: Screen grabs from YouTube video
FV: In that spirit of sharing, she also documents and shares her journey on social media under the tag “sailing4seafarms.” Sailing4seafarms is on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and GoFundMe, where CC posts current adventures and gathers donations from supporters to help fund her journey.
CR: There are so many people out there willing to help. We’ve gotten so lucky with the amount of support we’ve gotten. Every corner you turn, there’s somebody there who’s about the project and wants to do what they can. Just a lot of generosity out there.
FV: This has been Farah Vallecillo, reporting for WSLR News.
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