Indoor aquaculture to combat emerging fishery crisis

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Chennai, May 4: What may become a sustainable solution to the world fishery crisis is being experimented by scientists in the US. Completely cultured indoor marine fish may become the answer to the estimates of the wipe out of edible marine fish from the seas by 2048. Scientists at the Biotechnology Institute of the University of Maryland, Centre for Marine Biotechnology, in the US, are creating what may be the next generation of seafood. It may be a step ahead of the ecologically damaging 'net pens' used to culture marine fish in countries like Israel.

Using the city-supplied water and a complex microbial filtration system, the US scientists are raising hundreds of marine fish completely indoors. Yonathan Zohar, the centre's director and the study's leader, said, "it is the first indoor marine aquaculture system that can re-circulate nearly all of its water and expel zero waste." If Zohar's team succeeds, the system could

become economically competitive with current marine fish farming techniques, and it may be a sustainable answer to the world's growing fishery crisis, says a report from the World Watch Institute. Some estimates say as much as 90% of edible marine fish may disappear by 2048. The most common alternative is through fish farms that raise ocean-captured fish in coastal nets called 'net pens'. Marine aquaculture expanded about 10% each year between 2000 and 2004, according to the UN Food And Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

But 'net pens' pollute coastal environments with waste and antibiotics, fish escapes pose a threat to the diversity of wild fish populations, and diseases can spread easily.

Some nations are responding to 'net-pen' pollution by closing troublesome operations. In Israel the government has called for the removal of the 2,700 tonne of Red Sea net pens by June due to damage to nearby coral reefs, says the World Watch Institute report.

Zohar spent a decade developing those same net pens when he worked for the Israeli National Centre for Mariculture, before relocating to Baltimore in 1990. He says his land-based fish farming system is an improved alternative. "They are disease free, pathogen free; contaminant free; and toxin free," he said.