Page 14 - AA 2022 YEAR BOOK

Editorial

Land-based projects are either in the the expansion and building new cages,”
planning phase or already in the con- he told Reuters. “Five years from now, we
struction phase in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. expect to cover 60 percent of local de-
A private investment group ‘Abu Dhabi mand.”
Catalyst Partners’ invested in the 8F As-
set Management’s land-based aquacul- Yemen
ture fund (which owned Pure Salmon RAS With almost 2,000 km of pristine Indian
company), worth US$ 358.8 million.
Ocean and the Red Sea coastline, Yemen
In Dubai, Fish Farm LLC plans to pro- has almost endless resources and poten-
duce 10,000 MT of salmon annually. The tial for marine aquaculture. Unfortunate-
company currently has three facilities ly, civil war and unrest, poverty, lack of
across the UAE, including a hatchery in finance, knowledge, infrastructures and
Umm Al Quwain and cage farms in Dib- government support has resulted in no
ba. The Jebel Ali facility currently has the aquaculture development.
capacity to produce around 480 MT of
fish annualy, and has produced both yel- Iran
lowtail kingfish and salmon to date.
With the largest coastline (over 1,500
Sea cucumber processing km) in the Arabian (‘Persian’) Gulf and
Courtesy of NAQUA
many sheltered islands and bays, Iran
has huge potential to become a major
production has increased significantly player in the region’s aquaculture sec-
over the past few years and in 2018, tor. However, due to its political isolation,
aquaculture production surpassed cap- lack of funding and government support,
ture fisheries landings. Shrimp, mainly the marine aquaculture is still limited in
white shrimp Penaeus vannamei are the this part of the Gulf. There is one com-
dominant product of the KSAs’ aquacul- pany which grows Asian sea bass (im-
ture industry.
ported juveniles) in Busher province and
KSA government have set targets to a few other projects in planning or early
increase production to 300,000 MT by Oman construction phases in Hormozgan prov-
2025 and 600,000 MT by 2030. Of this ince.
figure, marine fish farms are slated to ac- As one of the highest per capita con- Technology
count for 450,000 MT, while shrimp and sumers of fish in the world and with 34%
land-based fish farms will make up the of total agriculture production depend- Ponds
remainder. ing on fisheries, seafood has been cen-
tral to Oman’s food sector. Oman is one Shrimps mainly P. vannamei, as well as
KSA’s aquaculture sector is more ma- of the largest producers and exporters other seafood organisms (fish, sea cu-
ture relative to other GCC countries. of fish in the GCC. Fisheries are still the cumbers, algae) are produced in the re-
Gilthead sea bream and European sea major source of seafood in Oman. The gion using ponds. The ponds are either
bass were first introduced to the coun- aquaculture industry, while is still in its earthen ponds or plastic lined ponds.
try in 1999. In 2020, a new, BAP-certified infancy (1,054 MT in 2019), has recently Water is pumped from the sea and dis-
marine finfish hatchery was established invested in large-scale production of persed to the ponds. Some of the pump-
in Al-Lith, Makkah Province and has a shrimp, European sea bass, and sea cu- ing facilities are vast and canals carry
production target of 10 million juveniles. cumber, making a promising start. The the water in-land, as the National Aqua-
The hatchery replaced supply of juve- Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is culture Group (NAQUA) facility at Al-
niles previously imported from Turkey envisaging that Oman will produce more Lith, KSA.
or Greece. than 200,000 MT of fish and seafood and
KSA is also the only country in the re- create jobs for 11,000 people between
gion with its own fully integrated aqua- 2030 and 2040.
culture feed mill, eliminating the need Qatar
for importing fish feeds from Europe.
However, hatchery feeds and specialty Qatar launched its first offshore aqua-
feeds are still imported, primarily from culture project in 2019. The Samkna fish
Europe. farm, which was established 50 km off-
shore, harvested its first batch of fish in
UAE November 2020. It currently has the ca-
Aquaculture is still a small industry in pacity to produce 2,000 MT of fish an-
the UAE, accounting for just over 3,000 nually, but according to Mr. Mahmoud
MT annually. There are 2 large and sev- Tahoun, operations and development di-
eral small farms; Al Jarf Fish Farm, which rector for marine aquaculture at Al-Qum-
produces 1,000 MT of fish (sea bream) ra, the Samkna fish farm intends to ramp
and shrimp, and Fish Farm LLC which this up. “We have started an expansion
boasts an annual production capacity of plan to double our production capacity Aquaculture ponds
3,000 MT. to 4,000 MT. We are obtaining permits for Courtesy of NAQUA

12 Arab Agriculture 2022