Virus-hit Indian resort turns pool into fish farm

Yahoo – AFP, Arun CHANDRABOSE, August 24, 2020

The pool at the Aveda Resort now houses thousands of pearl spot fish

A luxury resort in southern India has turned its swimming pool into a fish farm to stop the business sinking amid the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Normally the 150-metre (500-feet) pool at the Aveda Resort in Kerala state is packed with European tourists. Now thousands of pearl spot fish are causing the splash.

The complex was forced to shut in March when a nationwide coronavirus lockdown was ordered. Few hotels have been allowed to reopen since.

Of those which are still shuttered, not many boast a pool with 7.5 million litres of water, which can be put to alternative use.

"We have had zero revenues, so in June, we put around 16,000 two-month-old pearl spot fish in the pool," Aveda's general manager Jyotish Surendran told AFP.

The fish, which takes about eight months to reach full size, is a popular ingredient in dishes in southern India and the Middle East.

The resort's manager hoped money from the fish farm would help cover 

basic bills until tourists return

"We plan to harvest by November and will export to the Middle East," Surendran said, predicting about four tonnes of pearl spots growing in the swimming pool could be worth $40,000 on the market.

The makeshift farm would not cover the losses from the pandemic, which has driven many hotels to bankruptcy, said the hotel boss.

But Surendran was hopeful that the money would help cover basic bills so the business can keep running until tourists return. 

And the Aveda plans to keep faith with the pearl spot even when business resumes.

"We can't continue with this farm in the pool, but we are trying to find alternative land where we can build up this knowledge for bigger projects," he said.

Pope praises fishermen who clean up polluted seas

MSN – AFP, 18 January 2020

Pope Francis on Saturday praised fishermen cleaning up polluted seas by collecting the rubbish caught in their nets and bringing it back to land to dispose of it.

It is estimated that 80 percent of waste in the sea comes from land and 20 

percent from boats and the fishing industry (Filippo MONTEFORTE)

Fishermen from San Benedetto del Tronto in Italy, who voluntarily collect around a tonne of litter a week and then sort it to be recycled where possible, met Francis at the Vatican.

"I would like to express my particular appreciation for the seabed clean-up," Francis told them.

"This initiative is very important, both for the large amount of waste, especially plastic waste, that you have recovered, and -- and I would say above all -- because it can and is already becoming a repeatable model in other areas of Italy and abroad".

Fishermen say they get so much plastic in their nets that it stops 

them being able to catch fish (Filippo MONTEFORTE)

Some 60 percent of the waste the fishermen collect is plastic.

The pope said the project was a great example of how civil society could to its part to help fix global problems -- and hoped it would inspire institutions to step up and shoulder their own responsibilities.

It is estimated that 80 percent of waste in the sea comes from land and 20 percent from boats and the fishing industry.

A study by the peer-reviewed Public Library of Science (PLOS) published in 2015 estimated that the Mediterranean contains 1,000-3,000 tonnes of floating plastic, with an unknown quantity on the seabed.

The Nile river delivers at least 1,500 tonnes of plastic into the Med annually, according to the PLOS study.

Sperm whales wash up regularly on Italian beaches, their stomachs full of plastic, and fishermen tell of getting so much plastic in their nets that it stops them being able to catch fish.

Much of the rubbish is single-use, such as bottles, plates and cutlery, but also includes old nets from fishing or mussel farming and assorted random plastic objects, from medical products to fax machine parts.

Caviar 'queen': Chinese roe reigns around the world

Yahoo – AFP, Ludovic EHRET, December 12, 2019

A sturgeon at a fishery run by Chinese caviar company Kaluga Queen in Qiandao
lake, Zhejiang province (AFP Photo/WANG ZHAO)

The caviar on the menu of Michelin-starred restaurants may come from an unexpected place: China.

The country has endured embarrassing food scandals in recent years, but its sturgeon eggs have gained the respect of caviar connoisseurs around the world.

It has also become pricier for US buyers as Chinese caviar is among the slew of products hit with 25 percent tariffs in the US-China trade war.

The bulk of China's production comes from a picturesque lake ringed by mountains in eastern Zhejiang province where industry leader Kaluga Queen breeds the giant fish.

The brand was created in 2005 by experts who worked for the ministry of agriculture and it now produces more than a third of the world's caviar, making China the global leader.

The company's sturgeon farm is a 20-minute boat ride away from the shore in Qiandaohu, or Thousands Islands Lake.

Qiao Yuwen, a breeder, stood at the edge of the pools where the animals live until they are between the ages of seven and 15.

The biggest sturgeons can grow to be four meters (13 feet) long and weigh 300 kilos (660 pounds).

An employee of Chinese caviar company Kaluga Queen cuts open a sturgeon 

for its roe (AFP Photo/WANG ZHAO)

"They're like our babies. We see them from when they're very young, so it's hard when they are sent to be slaughtered," Qiao said.

"But there's also, of course, the satisfaction of having contributed to making an exceptional product," he said before throwing pellets containing shrimp, peas and vitamins to the fish.

'Price of a Ferrari'

For a long time, Iran and Russia fished sturgeon in the wild in the Caspian Sea.

But the fish population was nearly decimated by overfishing and poaching after the Soviet Union, which had regulated fishing, fell in 1991.

Sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea was banned in 2008 while sturgeon farms have sprung up everywhere, with Italy, France and China among the world leaders in the industry.

Kaluga Queen has 300 employees looking after some 200,000 sturgeons.

Once they reach sexual maturity, females are fished out and taken to a laboratory where they are stunned before their bellies are sliced open to extract the black eggs.

The roe is then washed, sorted, salted and placed in boxes.

Kaluga Queen produced 86 tonnes of caviar last year, most of it destined for exports, with half going to the European Union, 20 percent to the United States and 10 percent to Russia.

Kaluga Queen produced 86 tonnes of caviar last year, most of it destined for 

exports, with half going to the European Union, 20 percent to the United States 

and 10 percent to Russia (AFP Photo/WANG ZHAO)

Depending on the species, the price per kilo varies between 10,000 and 180,000 yuan ($1,420 to $25,600).

Sturgeons producing the most expensive caviar can carry as much as two million yuan worth of eggs.

"It's the price of a Ferrari," said Xia Yongtao, the company's vice president.

'Very good caviar'

Kaluga Queen has walked a "long road" to win the trust of customers since the company produced its first jar in 2006, Xia said.

Chinese caviar had to overcome scepticism from foreign clients who were used to headlines about food scandals, from contaminated milk powder to soy sauce containing arsenic and rice tainted with cadmium.

"A few years ago, customers were reluctant when we talked about Chinese caviar," said Raphael Bouchez, president of Kaviari, a Paris-based supplier to renowned restaurants.

Bouchez convinced customers by explaining how Chinese producers raise fish and use methods that respect the environment.

"Chinese caviar, it must be said, is a very good caviar," Bouchez said.

The bulk of China's caviar production comes from a picturesque lake ringed 

by mountains in eastern Zhejiang province (AFP Photo/WANG ZHAO)

"That said, many of the chefs still do not want it. They prefer to have caviar from France, Uruguay, or elsewhere," he said.

Today, Kaluga Queen has an annual turnover of 220 million yuan and counts among its customers German airline Lufthansa and L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, a two Michelin stars restaurant in Shanghai.

Distributors supply other restaurants around the world, and one buyer said he had delivered one shipment to Kim Jong Un, according to Xia.

French chef Guy Savoy, whose Paris restaurant has three Michelin stars and is rated the best in the world, uses Chinese caviar with skate wings and scallops.

"The label 'made in China' does not matter," Savoy told AFP. "The important thing is the quality of the breeding. Those supplied to us are of remarkable quality."

Lily Liu, Kaluga Queen's marketing manager, hopes someone else can try her company's caviar.

"We hope that Donald Trump will taste our caviar and say: 'I like it! Let's reduce tariffs and help Chinese caviar conquer America!"

Israeli fish farmers give peckish pelicans free lunch

Yahoo – AFP, Jonah Mandel, December 8, 2019

Great white pelicans eat fish provided by Israeli farmers at a water reservoir in
the Emek Hefer valley north of Tel Aviv (AFP Photo/MENAHEM KAHANA)

Beit Alfa (Israel) (AFP) - Migratory pelicans have long raided Israeli fish farms, which try to deter them with loudspeakers, laser beams and by firing blank rounds from rifles.

In their desperation, they have come up with another way: offering the birds a free lunch.

An estimated 50,000 pelicans stop off in Israel during their annual migration from the Balkans to Africa, where they enjoy a mild winter before returning to Europe.

They rest and feed in the Middle Eastern country for weeks, causing chaos for fish farmers, whose outdoor commercial pools and reservoirs provide rich pickings.

Before the pelicans reach Israel, "they have nowhere to stop and eat", said Eli Sharir, general manager of the Israel Fish Breeders Association.

The impact on the fish farms is enormous.

"We're talking millions of shekels a year," he said.

So six years ago Israeli fisherman came up with a solution -- providing alternative feed with unmarketable fish to try to keep pelicans away from the commercial pools.

An Israeli Nature and Parks Authority employee feeds fish to pelicans so they

don't raid commercial fish pools instead (AFP Photo/MENAHEM KAHANA)

One recent day on a reservoir in northern Israel, hundreds of great white pelicans swooped down to position themselves in the shallow waters, eyeing a truck backing up to the water's edge.

Then the truck dropped its cargo of thousands of small, live, flapping fish into the water, where they were almost instantly scooped up by the pelicans' nimble beaks.

Luxury stop-over

Pisciculture is limited in Israel, producing just 10 percent of the fish consumed domestically.

But it is vital for the small agricultural communities of Emek Hamaayanot, the lush area below the Gilboa mountain range in northeastern Israel often dubbed the "valley of the springs."

So to protect their livelihoods, the farmers in the Sharon region, north of Tel Aviv, and Hula valley, near Israel's eastern border with Lebanon, have joined forces with the Nature and Parks Authority to create the alternative feeding sites.

But not everyone believes it's a good idea. Critics say the birds may get used to making the luxurious stop-over in Israel -- and may even be enticed to stay the entire winter.

Great white pelicans at a reservoir in Mishmar HaSharon, north of the Israeli 

city of Tel Aviv (AFP Photo/JACK GUEZ)

So fish farmers still rely on a toolkit of other ways to scare off the birds -- without harming them, as pelicans are protected under international conventions.

Dor Maimon, who works for the area's farmers in protecting produce from wild animals, uses a remote-controlled, 1.5 metre (five foot) long motorboat to buzz groups of pelicans in a reservoir near Beit Alfa, sending the birds spiralling into the sky.

Nitzan Nadan, who manages the Gilboa Fish cooperative, said he spends around 600,000 shekels ($172,000) a year on measures including vehicle-mounted loudspeakers and firing blank rifle rounds.

At night, projectors and laser beams are used to keep the birds away.

"The pelicans have to eat and eat in our pools," he said. "They cause damage you can't even begin to estimate."

Ecological causes

In the past pelican sightings close to Israeli fish pools were rare, but more have come because of ecological problems elsewhere, say experts.

Thousands of migratory pelicans pass though Israel on their way from 

Europe to Africa and back (AFP Photo/JACK GUEZ)

Marshlands and lakes in nearby Turkey, Lebanon and Syria have dried out in recent decades, and even Israeli fishing pools have diminished in number for economic reasons, said Amit Dolev, chief ecologist of the northern district of Israel's Nature and Parks Authority.

"This means that the remaining (water bodies) are nearly the only spots available," he said.

What makes things worse for Israel is the fact that shooting the birds is accepted in neighbouring countries, causing the pelicans to avoid pit stops there.

"Israel is something of an island of nature preservation in the Middle East in many aspects, including this one," Dolev said.

To Dolev, broader global cooperation in monitoring the pelicans could help find a solution that would aid the struggling Israeli farmers.

"The issue is certainly global," he said, noting the pelicans' Balkan origins and African destination. "We're basically dealing with it on our own."

The fish farmers said they received no regular help from the state in footing the expenses of the alternative feedings and deterrents.

"We expect help from the world, from Europe, to finance the high costs," Sharir said.

Zeeland farm claims breakthrough with land-bred oysters

DutchNews, December 21, 2015

File photograph of oysters in Yerseke.
Photo: Takeaway via Wikimedia Commons

An oyster farm in Zeeland is claiming a world first after successfully raising the clams on land, NOS reports. 

Father and son team Sam and Sybe Smit cultivated the creuse or Japanese oysters at their high-tech facility in Kats, on the Oosterschelde estuary. The first batch is being taken to market this week so they are available in restaurants and specialist fishmongers in time for Christmas. 

The farmers used containers filled with purified river water and home-grown plankton to mature the oysters, which were bought from a sea oyster farm as immature specimens. 

The technique allows oysters to mature and be sold all year round and reduces damage through disease. Eventually the team hope to cultivate the oysters from seed. 

The Smits’ next aim is to breed the European flat oyster, which is a more valuable species on the fish markets.

Related Article:

Flamingo flock moves into Zeeland

Ocean threat from Hong Kong's taste for seafood

Yahoo – AFP, Dennis Chong, 10 Aug 2015

Hong Kong is the second-largest consumer of seafood per capita in Asia -- an

 average resident consumes 71.2 kilos (157 pounds) of seafood each year 

(AFP Photo/Isaac Lawrence)

Hong Kong (AFP) - A seafood lunch in Hong Kong is enjoyed by locals and visitors alike, but with threatened species on the menu and fishing practices that endanger marine life, campaigners want to change the city's appetite.

Hong Kong is the second-largest consumer of seafood per capita in Asia -- an average resident consumes 71.2 kilos (157 pounds) of seafood each year, more than four times the global average, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature Hong Kong.

Seafood is ubiquitous in Hong Kong, where

 customers often choose their fish live from

a tank (AFP Photo/Isaac Lawrence)

Yet the city of seven million has been forced to become one of the biggest seafood importers in the world as local waters are depleted of fish stocks.

Whether in high-end restaurants or waterside eateries, seafood is ubiquitous in the southern Chinese city, where customers often choose their fish live from a tank.

Baked lobster with noodles in cheese and deep-fried prawns in salted egg yolk are among local favourites.

But a "fish tank index" compiled by WWF Hong Kong found that more than 50 percent of the species available in the city's traditional restaurant tanks were from "highly unsustainable" sources.

"Overfishing is driving the collapse of the world's ocean fish stocks and edging many types of fish towards extinction, yet they are still on our menus," WWF Hong Kong conservation director Gavin Edwards told AFP.

"Hong Kong has a special responsibility to turn the tide as one of the biggest consumers of seafood."

Unsustainable fish include those caught by controversial fishing practices, such as using cyanide poison, or from overfishing already depleted species.

Popular, threatened seafood in Hong Kong include grouper, wild sea cucumber and humphead wrasse -- a coral reef fish.

Lack of information

The WWF has launched a new online seafood guide for Hong Kong detailing which types are deemed unsustainable.

Popular, threatened seafood in Hong Kong

 include grouper, wild sea cucumber and

 humphead wrasse -- a coral reef fish

(AFP Photo/Isaac Lawrence)

It also recently held a "Sustainable Seafood Week" asking restaurants to provide ocean-friendly options.

But there is still a way to go to change consumer habits.

Visiting Hong Kong for a post-graduation trip, Japanese student Ted Machizawa, 22, has just finished lunch in the coastal town of Sai Kung, famous for its seafood.

He says he had no idea whether his meal -- steamed grouper and shrimps -- could pose a threat to the ocean.

"We're just trying to see what it's like here. We are probably not too keen on knowing what kind of fish it is," he said, sitting metres away from tanks packed with live crabs and reef fish.

Hong Konger Janice Fung said restaurants rarely gave information on sourcing.

"If you go to an expensive restaurant or a specialised seafood shop they might tell you. Otherwise the information is not comprehensive," she said as she waited for a meal at Cafe Deco on the city's famous Peak, which serves a wide range of seafood.

"If you tell me what I am eating is not sustainable I will try to avoid it," she added.

Cafe Deco has opted to provide an alternative sustainable menu as part of the WWF push -- shunning the controversial delicacy shark fin, for example.

Ng Wai-lun, one of the owners of Chuen Kee Seafood Restaurant on Sai Kung's

 promenade, says he would have to scrap 70 percent of the menu to make it

 ocean-friendly, something he fears would drive customers away (AFP Photo/
Isaac Lawrence)

"You can't necessarily tell the difference (in flavour)... if you don't use shark fin to make dumplings," senior chef William Chang told AFP as he put the finishing touches to ocean trout-stuffed ravioli, a dish on the sustainable menu.

Chang says restaurants should "take the first step" to change people's eating habits.

Some suppliers are also trying to help.

Banker-turned-fish farmer Mark Kwok hopes that by farming groupers, which are on the decline in the ocean, he can help stem the crisis.

His farm in the northern hillside town of Yuen Long was accredited as sustainable by the WWF in 2013.

"We have about 35,000 fish. Even if you were to eat all of them, it wouldn't make a dent in the ecosystem because these are farmed fish that have never seen the ocean," he told AFP.

Environmentalists in the Philippines say stocks of grouper are dwindling near the island of Palawan, a major source for Hong Kong.

"We have fishermen who say they used to catch them near the coast. But now, they have to go further out to sea," said Melo Ponce De Leon, spokeswoman of the government's Palawan Council for Sustainable Development.

Fear of change

Baked lobster with noodles in cheese and 

deep-fried prawns in salted egg yolk are 

among local seafood favourites (AFP

Photo/Isaac Lawrence)

Some Hong Kong restaurateurs worry that changing their menus would dent their incomes.

"Many of our customers are from mainland China and they want to get something they have never seen before," says Ng Wai-lun, one of the owners of Chuen Kee Seafood Restaurant on Sai Kung's promenade.

"They like to pick the colourful ones... or something caught fresh from the wild," said Ng, pointing out a tank of humphead wrasse and groupers.

Ng says he would have to scrap 70 percent of the menu to make it ocean-friendly, something he fears would drive customers away.

But campaigners say progress has been made.

"We found in a recent survey that 80 percent of customers would not buy unsustainable seafood if they knew it was unsustainable," says Edwards.

"There is more awareness, but we still have much further to go."

High levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria found in Asian farmed fish

DutchNews.nl, Friday 07 November 2014

(NOS)

Spot checks of fish and prawns which have been farmed in Asia found that half contain bacteria which is resistant to antibiotics, according to animal rights organisation Wakker Dier.

The foundation had 43 samples of Asian fish and prawns tested for bacteria. One prawn sample was even found to have ESBL, an enzyme which prevents many antibiotics from working. It has previously been detected in meat but never before in fish, Wakker Dier said.

Campaign leader Hanneke van Ormondt says fish such as tilapia and pangasius are raised in giant tanks in Vietnam and Thailand and given huge amounts of antibiotics to combat illness. Antibiotics are also used to stimulate the fish to grow more quickly, she said.

Checks

If the fish is not properly cooked, the bacteria can also have an impact on human health by stopping antibiotics from working.

The Dutch food safety body NVWA said in 2009 there should be a proper system of checks on fish but this has not yet been developed, broadcaster Nos says.

A spokesman for the food retailers' association CBL said this is now a priority. ‘We are going to increase our checks on fish farms and make it clear they should use fewer antibiotics,’ a spokesman told Nos.

Rare fish fry released into Yellow River to repair ecosystem

Want China Times, Xinhua 2014-10-05

A view over the upper reaches of the Yellow River in Qinghai. (File photo/Xinhua)

Over 7 million rare fish fry have been released into the upper reaches of the Yellow River, China's second concerted effort to repair the river's ecosystem after a similar effort in 2009, said local fishery authorities.

Qinghai province in northwestern China, where the Yellow River and the Yangtze River originate, plans to release about 900,000 rare, captive-bred, native fish this year to replenish stocks, said Wang Guojie, deputy chief of the province's fishery environment supervision office.

The Ministry of Agriculture, in charge of fisheries, announced in 2007 that one third of the 150 fish species in the Yellow River were believed to be extinct due to human activity and low rainfall.

Overfishing, dumping and hydropower projects degraded the environment and led to a shrinking fish population. In Qinghai, 22 fish species are native and most of them are only found on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau.

"Fish grow much more slowly on the plateau than at low altitude, due to cold weather. Plateau fish, living at around 4,000 meters above the sea level, are extremely resistant to cold, but only add an average of half a kilogram in weight every ten years," said Wang.

Once the stocks are damaged, it's hard to restore them quickly, he said.

"Our survey shows a rise in fish stocks in some key areas over the past five years, meaning the released fry have adapted well," said the official.

Qinghai has plans to build more fish farms and expand the project's release area.

Marine Biologist is a Giant in World of Shrimp Medicine

Jakarta Globe, Lisa Siregar, April 03, 2012

Sidrotun Naim, the recipient of a For Women in Science fellowship, is a
 visiting scholar at Harvard University, where she hopes to crack the code
of  the deadly IMNV virus, which last year caused shrimp farmers in Indonesia
losses of up to $200 million. (JG Photos/Lisa Siregar)  

        

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After Aceh was devastated by the 2004 tsunami, its economy had to be rebuilt to meet the demand for food and to provide jobs.  Marine biologist Sidrotun Naim, 32, the “shrimp doctor” to her Acehnese colleagues, is playing a pivotal role in this rebuilding, and in the future health of Indonesian shrimp farms.  

Sidrotun arrived in Aceh’s Pidie district in 2006, after she graduated in marine biology from the University of Queensland in Australia. Working as part of a tsunami rehabilitation program through the World Wildlife Fund, Sidrotun was asked to consult on a shrimp breeding project.

“They said, ‘You’re clever and still young, you must study the shrimp and help us,’ ” Sidrotun said. And so she dedicated herself to shrimp, and helping the people of Pidie and Aceh get back on their feet.

Sidrotun is from a large Javanese family and excelled at school, picking up a number of prestigious scholarships as she furthered her studies. She is thought to be one of the first crustacean pathologists in a country that is one of the biggest shrimp producers in the world. 

Shrimp farming is a high-risk business, with shrimp being highly prone to a handful of illnesses, the most dangerous of which is white spot syndrome, a viral infection that can wipe out an entire broodstock (a term in aquaculture that refers to a group of mature individuals used for breeding purposes) in three days.

Although Indonesia is among the biggest shrimp exporters in the world,  along with China, Thailand and Vietnam, the country still does very little scientific research to support local shrimp farmers. Plenty of studies have been carried out on fish and crabs, Sidrotun said, but not shrimp.

“The shrimp industry began in the ’80s when people stopped catching shrimp and began breeding them,” she said. “But shrimp are prone to illness because of the density of the broodstock.”

In 2009, Sidrotun won a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Arizona in Tucson, a reference laboratory for studying illnesses in shrimp, where she is now completing her master’s thesis on the effects of adding tilapia (a type of fish) to shrimp broodstock. 

After 16 weeks of research in Arizona, Sidrotun found that tilapia can help the health of the stock.  In a regular broodstock, shrimp typically live at the bottom of the pond.

Sidrotun’s experiment involved breeding tilapia above the broodstock by putting them in a large fish net. This improved the quality of the water, as the fish seemed to consume the bacteria before it could filter down to the bottom of the pond and attack the shrimp.

“[Adding tilapia] also adds economic value for our farmers, because they can breed fish, algae and shrimp all in one broodstock,” Sidrotun said.

But the exact reasons behind the results are inconclusive, and she hopes to investigate the results further.

Last week, Sidrotun won a fellowship worth $40,000 from For Women in Science, a collaboration between Unesco and the L’Oreal Foundation in Paris. Sidrotun said she planned to use the fellowship, which was awarded by a jury led by Nobel winners, to fund her postdoctoral studies at Harvard’s medical school, where she is a visiting scholar.

The seventh of 11 children, Sidrotun said her family usually ate rice and tempeh when she was growing up, and rarely indulged in seafood. Her father, Abidullah, was a high school teacher, and is now retired with his wife, Siti Muslichah.

Despite a humble upbringing, half of Sidrotun’s siblings went to school overseas through scholarships, including her third brother, who is now pursuing his studies in management at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

Sidrotun has a  6-year-old son, and is married to Dedi Priadi, who studies psychology at the University of Arizona.

Upon completion of her dissertation and graduation, Sidrotun intends to study IMNV, one of the most threatening shrimp viruses found in Brazil and Indonesia. The virus first appeared in Indonesia in 2006, and has since caused harvest failures costing millions of dollars, she said.

“Last year, our farmers suffered a loss of $150 million to $200 million because of this virus,” she said. 

Upon graduating from the University of Arizona, Sidrotun intends to study how IMNV and shrimp interact. A large number of shrimp survive the virus, and she hopes to discover what allows some shrimp to survive while others die. It is a scientific long-shot, but every major breakthrough begins with a single step.

“To be able to design a system to minimize the risk, we have to understand the virus first,” she said. “I hope in 5 to 10 years, our native shrimp can be more stable, so that traditional farmers can have a more solid bargaining position.”

The fishing industry has not been kind to shrimp farmers, Sidrotun said. The industry will often help farmers start their stocks, she said, but then make them shoulder all the costs for failed harvests.

“It should be the part of the company’s risk and not just farmers, because some crucial things, like disease, are out of their control,” she said.

It might seem like a scientist dedicated to producing healthy shrimp stock would harbor a certain disdain for disease, but Sidrotun speaks about viruses with respect.

“Viruses have been on earth much longer than bacteria and humans have, so we have to understand them,” she said. “Through evolution, humans have become smaller and smaller, but what we don’t know is if viruses have become stronger.”

What we do know, she said, is that unlike plants and animals, which are all built on unchanging  DNA, viruses can mutate and adapt very quickly, which is why they are so difficult to study.

The cure for HIV, for example, continues to elude scientists despite years of research and billions of dollars in funding. But IMNV is more complicated because it is a double-strand, where HIV is a single-strand.

Sidrotun is passionate about improving the understanding of — and someday finding a cure for — IMNV.  She is currently working with Max Nibert at Harvard, who discovered the 3D structure of the virus.

Sidrotun also hopes her research will be useful for scientists invested in study of the rotavirus, which kills about 500,000 children every year worldwide.

She said, “A virus may seem like a minor thing because to us it’s invisible, but it can destroy months of efforts by our local farmers in days, so yes, it’s important.”

Fish farming is answer to increasing global meat demands, says report

Conservation International says aquaculture has lower environmental impact than cattle, pig and poultry farming

guardian.co.uk, Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent, Tuesday 14 June 2011

Carp in a fish farm at Zabieniec, Poland. Photograph: Janek Skarzynski
/ AFP/Getty Images

The world needs to farm more fish and algae to meet the world's growing demand for animal products, according to a report released on Tuesday by international NGO Conservation International.

The worldwide assessment concluded the environmental impact of aquaculture is lower than raising cattle, pigs or poultry so it should be expanded to alleviate the growing global food crisis.

"Aquaculture is most likely to meet the growing demand for animal products with the least demand on ecosystems," said Sebastian Troëng of Conservation International. "It would be better still if more people became vegetarian, but that looks unlikely."

The report was co-written with the WorldFish Centre – which advocates sustainable aquaculture – as a response to the precipitous decline in word fish stocks.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that over 84% of the world's fisheries are either depleted, over- or fully exploited, which means that wild fish in oceans are too weak to meet the growing needs of an expanding, increasingly affluent global population.

Fish farming in ponds, lakes, rivers and coastal waters is increasingly used to fill the gap – it is overtake wild-caught fish produce this year – particularly in Asia. The world's most crowded continent accounts for 91% of aquacultural production with the vast majority – about two-thirds – in China. This trend is expected to continue.

"China, India and the rest of Asia with their growing middle classes are where we can expect demand for fish to rise most significantly," said co-author Mike Phillips, a senior scientist at WorldFish. "Current trends indicate that the majority of the increase in global production will come from south and south-east Asia, with a continued drive by major producersuch as China and Vietnam towards export to Europea and north America."

The report says fish farming can have environmental benefits if done sustainably. Fish process energy more efficiently than mammals such as cows and pigs because they are cold-blooded (so less calories are needed for warming themselves) and live in water (so relatively more of the body converts to muscle than bone). The authors say that for each kilogram of protein from beef, a cow needs to be fed the equivalent of 61kg of grain, for pork, a pig needs 38kg, but for fish it is just 13kg of grain.

In addition, says the report, aquaculture emits less phosophorous, nitrogen and greenhouse gases than livestock farms.

However, it warns farming can have a greater negative impact if it focuses on carnivorous fish such as eel and salmon, or on shrimps and prawns, which require more temperature control. There is a lower impact from herbivorous fish, or better still seaweed, mussels, oysters and molluscs.

Fish farms have also been blamed for pollution and genetic contamination of wild stocks.

The report says 73% of salmon, 90% of carp and 99% of seaweed consumed worldwide is produced with aquaculture. The authors predict worldwide production will rise from 52.6m tonnes in 2008 to between 79m and 110m tonnes by 2030. However, environmental constraints could slow growth in China due to shortages of land and water and increased competition for energy and feed.

To improve the industry, they suggest greater monitoring, technological innovation and policy support. Mass production of microalgae – which is thought to be approaching commercial stage – is thought to have enormous potential for efficiency gains because it could replace fish feed and fish oil.

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