A well-known proverb appears on a wall near the entrance to the Columbus Center on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor: Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.

A worthy sentiment, yes. But what happens if we use up the bounty of the world’s oceans and seas? Talk for a few minutes with aquaculture pioneer Yonathan Zohar and you might be moved to coin a new proverb:

Teach too many people to fish, and there might one day be nothing left to catch.

Zohar is chair of UMBC’s new Department of Marine Biotechnology. At the Columbus Center, he and his colleagues develop new techniques and technologies to protect the world’s oceans and seas and preserve the life inside them.

Read the full story in the Winter 2011 issue of UMBC Magazine.