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Close-up of a female tilapia with eggs inside her mouth. Once every week, employees at the Blue Ridge Aquaculture company in Martinsville, VA work inside the brood ponds to inspect fish for eggs. Tilapia are mouth brooders and the females carry fertilized eggs within their mouths. The workers extract the eggs into plastic buckets of water, then hatch the eggs, thus closing the circle on their farm-raised fish.