Dr. Watanabe is currently a Research Professor with the Center for Marine Science at UNC-Wilmington where he is Coordinator of the Center’s Aquaculture Program. Dr. Watanabe is also Mariculture Program Leader for MARBIONC, a private-public business incubator at UNCW-CMS. His background is in the area of general finfish aquaculture. He has published extensively in the areas of controlled breeding, larval culture, and juvenile growout of various freshwater and marine finfish species. He has conducted research in Asia, the Pacific, the Caribbean as well as in the US and with a variety of species.