Aquaculture Challenge

Registration open through January 10, 2025!

The Michigan Sea Grant-led Aquaculture Challenge engages students in STEM learning, innovation, and career development by developing aquaponics systems and business plans.

The Aquaculture Challenge is a collaboration between MISG and Lake Superior State University (LSSU). This science competition engages students in grades 8-12 from around the Midwest in a four-month venture to:

• Build and monitor aquaponics systems
• Create business plans
• Cook seafood dishes or do seafood community outreach projects

How to participate

The Aquaculture Challenge is a competition open to teams of 8th-12th grade student with an adult coach or captain. Teams can come from rural, urban, and suburban schools or homeschool groups in Michigan and surrounding Great Lakes states. New and returning teams are welcome; MISG staff provide start-up guidance and resources for coaches before the competition cycle begins each January. Registration is currently open for the 2025 competition, closing January 10, 2025.

The competition consists of 4 parts designed to engage students in a wide variety of hands-on STEM and humanities topics.

Teams will:

• Design and build an aquaponics system of any size.
• Monitor the system using chemical and physical monitoring. Bonus points are awarded for using automated monitoring systems.
• Create a business plan for the system or a scaled version of the system; the plan can follow a for-profit or nonprofit model.
• Create a seafood dish and perform an outreach project promoting healthy seafood consumption.

The competition comes with support such as: $150 stipends, a virtual coach training and kick off meeting, a team liaison assigned to meet virtually with each team throughout the season, and several electronic resources.

Teams work from January-April to design and engineer table-top aquaponics systems. They spend the competition window monitoring and automating the systems, crafting business plans, and creating seafood outreach projects. Staff from MISG and faculty and students from Lake Superior State University provide guidance and mentorship to teams and coaches throughout the process.

The competition ends in late April, when teams submit their accomplishments virtually using videos and PDFs to capture their hard work. A virtual awards ceremony takes place in April or early May, and winning teams receive trophies in the mail.

Learn more through the North Central Regional Aquaculture Center Youth Education in Aquaculture page. 

To learn more about the Aquaculture Challenge or to explore participating in the future, contact MISG Extension Educator Elliot Nelson at elliotne@msu.edu or 906-322-0353.