Martin A. Moe, Jr.
From Microcosm Aquarium Explorer
Martin Andreas Moe, Jr. has been around for a long time.
He holds a master’s degree from the University of South Florida and his scientific and popular articles and books date back to 1962, when he began his career as a marine biologist for the State of Florida. He entered the private sector and developed the basic technology for breeding Florida pompano in 1970. He accomplished the first commercial culture of marine tropical fish (Ocellaris Clownfish and Neon Gobies) in a garage in 1972, and over the years has reared more than 30 species of marine tropical fish, including spawning, rearing, and even hybridizing French and Grey Angelfish.
He founded the first commercial marine fish hatchery, Aqualife Research Corporation, in 1973 to produce tropical marine aquarium fish, and Green Turtle Publications in 1982 to write and publish books on the marine aquarium hobby.
Moe is the author of a definitive book on tropical Atlantic lobsters, Lobsters: Florida, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, as well as his popular and best-selling marine aquarium books, Marine Aquarium Handbook: Beginner to Breeder and The Marine Aquarium Reference: Systems and Invertebrates. Other books he authored are Breeding the Orchid Dottyback: An Aquarist’s Journal and (with his wife, Barbara) The Marine Aquarists’ Quiz Book.
He and Barbara now live in the Florida Keys and have come full circle—they have set up a small experimental marine culture laboratory in a spare room. Recently, after three years of work developing the technology for large-scale breeding of the Long-spined Sea Urchin, Diadema antillarum, Moe has been successful, and this technology may be instrumental in future coral reef restoration efforts in the tropical western Atlantic and Caribbean. See: Cracking the Diadema Code. Martin A. Moe, Jr. is the author of: