News
Aquaculture Potential
13th February 2007
by Seniorl Anzu
Papua New Guinea has big potential in the aquaculture or fish farming industry. This is due to a diversity of native aquaculture species that is available with the country's pristine tropical conditions and a huge tendency to complement the wild fishery.
Saun Ignatius of the National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI) said the farming of both native and introduced aquaculture species can provide more for farmers in terms of food and income, resulting in improved food security. This, he said, would also replace fish product imports, greater than domestic landings (64, 000 t or 14.8 kg/person/yr in 1995), and increase export earnings.
Mr Ignatius was speaking at a seminar last Friday in Lae. However, he said due to poor research and development efforts in the past; coupled with poor access to information and technology by farmers has hindered the development of aquaculture. He said though early activities date back to the 1950s, the industry went through bust and boom cycles over the years without any real growth.
Mr Ignatius said there has been a lot of interest in freshwater fish farming in the inland areas of PNG, especially in Morobe, Western Highlands, Madang, Simbu and Eastern Highlands Provinces. Much of these were mainly concentrating on carp, rainbow trout and most recently tilapia in ponds.
"But there are still limitations in feeds and feeding strategies, lack of information on pond management and a complete absence of alternative production systems. Production in such instances is therefore low because most farmers keep fish in extensive systems with no additional feed or fertiliser", Mr Ignatius said.
He said NARI has been keen on incorporating aquaculture into its livestock research activities in a bid to identify and promote improved technologies. This was to complement the national aquaculture development strategies of the National Fisheries Authority with the aim to improve aquaculture products. He said NARI's research and development initiatives will focus on:
- Development of alternative and integrated production systems
- Development of cost-effective feeding systems for inland aquaculture species (carp, tilapia and trout)
- Testing and promotion of new aquaculture species (freshwater prawns, mud crab and marine prawns)
Mr Saun said part of the strategy would be to look at "…low cost aquaculture technologies for tilapia culture, freshwater prawn, marine prawns and mud crab which can be easily adopted in PNG with very little modification. Hatchery technologies for sea cucumber, tropical oysters, aquarium fish and coral reef fish (groupers) are also available from our Asian and Pacific neighbors which can be easily modified and promoted in PNG."