by Wesley Malcorps, PhD student, The Institute of
Aquaculture, University of Stirling, UK and Dr Arash Shirvani, Owner, Modern
Bio-Treasures of Qeshm, Iran
Over the past few years I travelled several times to Iran to experience its culture, kind people, great food and to discover its stunning nature on land and below water. Iran’s geography, size, diversity of water bodies and climate shows great potential for aquaculture, however, this is relatively unexploited. Curiosity was the driver to write this brief article about the Iranian seafood sector together with my friend, fellow aquaculture enthusiast and scuba diver; Dr Arash Shirvani.
The Islamic Republic of Iran (also called Iran or Persia) is located in the Middle East with a large coastline (including islands) of over 5,800km, bordering the Caspian Sea in the north, the Persian Gulf in the south and the Gulf of Oman in the south-east (Mousavi et al., 2008). This unique location, in combination with the size of the country and diversity of landscapes, give Iran a variable climate.
Over the past few years I travelled several times to Iran to experience its culture, kind people, great food and to discover its stunning nature on land and below water. Iran’s geography, size, diversity of water bodies and climate shows great potential for aquaculture, however, this is relatively unexploited. Curiosity was the driver to write this brief article about the Iranian seafood sector together with my friend, fellow aquaculture enthusiast and scuba diver; Dr Arash Shirvani.
The Islamic Republic of Iran (also called Iran or Persia) is located in the Middle East with a large coastline (including islands) of over 5,800km, bordering the Caspian Sea in the north, the Persian Gulf in the south and the Gulf of Oman in the south-east (Mousavi et al., 2008). This unique location, in combination with the size of the country and diversity of landscapes, give Iran a variable climate.
While these factors indicate a potential for seafood consumption this is not reflected in the statistics, as Iran consumes approximately 10kg per capita in 2013, which is around half of the global average (FAOStat). Nevertheless, Iran’s size, climate and the available freshwater resources for different types of aquaculture (Harlioglu and Farhadi, 2017) shows great potential to participate in fulfilling the growing global demand for seafood.
This became clear over the past two decades, as fisheries and aquaculture combined grew about 11.5 percent annually since 2004, reaching a production of approximately 947,000 metric tonnes (MT) in 2014 and over one million MT in 2016 (NordOest, 2017). This resulted in an increase in employment over the years, reaching a total of almost 250,000 people in 2014, according to the FAO.
Capture fisheries played an important role and saw an increase in production from 314,165 MT to 535,865 MT in 2004 and 2014, respectively (IFO, 2013; IFO, 2015). The fishery sector is seen by the local population as one of the most promising industries (Harlioglu and Farhadi, 2017) and this is reflected by government investments increasing from five million dollars to 83 million dollars from 1995 till 2013, respectively (FAO, n.d.).
Despite the increase in capture fishery production, the share of aquaculture production followed up quickly from 26 percent (approximately 124,560 MT) in 2004 to 39 percent (approximately 371,840 MT) in 2014 (Harlioglu and Farhadi, 2017). Iran is currently one of the most important aquaculture producers in the Persian Gulf region and ranked 19th by volume in 2016 on the global aquaculture production list, according to the FAO.
Read more HERE.
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