The success of tilapia may pose threats to health and ecology

A common Bible story says Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, which scholars surmise were tilapia. But at the Aquafinca fish farm here, a modern miracle takes place daily: Tens of thousands of beefy, flapping tilapia are hauled out of teeming cages on Lake Yojoa, converted to fillets in a cold slaughterhouse and rushed onto planes bound for the United States, where some will appear on plates within 12 hours.

Americans ate 215 million kilograms of tilapia last year, four times the amount a decade ago, making this once obscure African native the most popular farmed fish in the United States. Although wild fish predominate in most species, a vast majority of the tilapia consumed is "harvested" from pens or cages in Latin America and Asia. Read more ...

This blog is written by Martin Little, The Aquaculturists, published and supported by the International Aquafeed Magazine from Perendale Publishers

New Zealand: Malaysian researcher wins fish technology award

Ms Clara Bah

Ms Clara Bah, a researcher at the Department of Food Science, University of Otago in New Zealand has won the first ever Peter Howgate Award for young fish technologists. Ms Bah received a prize of €500 (CAN$683.085) which will help her to attend the New Zealand Institute of Food Science and Technology (NZIFST) conference in Rotorua, New Zealand at the end of June 2011, at which she will present her MSc research findings on the bioactivity of fish roes from five commercial New Zealand fish species.

She hopes her paper will help to publicise how the extraction of useful bioactive compounds from parts of fish which are often discarded can help to improve the commercial value of fishery products.  Ms Bah, who has a B.Eng in Chemical-Bioprocess Engineering from the Technological University of Malaysia, arrived in New Zealand in 2008, and obtained her MSc from the University of Otago at the end 2010. She hopes that her ongoing research will lead to a PhD in future. Her supervisor, Dr Alaa el-Din Bekhit, praised her penchant for hard work and learning, and her commitment to developing new approaches to improving utilisation of undervalued fishery resources. Read more ...

This blog is written by Martin Little The Aquaculturists, published and supported by the International Aquafeed Magazine from Perendale Publishers

Sustainable small-scale catfish farming

William Wurts from Kentucky State University looks at sustainable small-scale catfish farming. Costs of energy, especially crude oil, have skyrocketed causing dramatic cost increases for intensive, commercial channel catfish farming. High energy prices have led to increased costs for distribution (processed fish and feed), electric aeration and on-farm practices relying on fossil fuels.

High crude oil prices caused a shift in corn and soybean production from foodstuffs to biofuels. Channel catfish feeds are formulated with roughly 50 percent soybean and 30 percent corn. The costs of feeds and feeding for catfish farming have soared. Fuel prices have not yet matched their previous highs. But because global population growth and fossil fuel consumption have increased exponentially over the past 40 years, and continue to do so, energy costs will likely reach new highs in the near future. Read more ...

This blog is written by Martin Little The Aquaculturists, published and supported by the International Aquafeed Magazine from Perendale Publishers