There is something fishy going on in a vacant house in Detroit’s North End, and U-M graduate student Elizabeth “Lizzie” Grobbel takes full responsibility.
That’s because Grobbel, an environmental engineering master’s student and a Dow Sustainability Fellow at U-M, is pursuing a pilot project called “Urban revitalization through sustainable small-scale aquaculture.”
With seed funding from U-M’s Dow Distinguished Awards for Interdisciplinary Sustainability Program, Grobbel is using a vacant house in Detroit to cultivate approximately 400 shrimp from larvae, distribute the mature shrimp within the city, and demonstrate aquaculture as a viable way to address the scarcity of locally grown seafood. At the same time she is hoping to demonstrate productive uses for vacant city property.
