Aqua News
New global partnership to promote aquaculture in fighting hunger
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TheAquaculturist
A regular look inside the aquaculture industry
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e like to celebrate the wonderful, funny and just plain weird world of aquaculture. Here are some of the off the wall stories that caught our attention recently. The breeding cycle of the European eels has puzzled aquaculturists for years. No one knows how the species makes its epic journey from places as diverse as Northern Africa and Iceland to the Sargasso Sea to spawn. To date, no baby eels have been bred in captivity. However, the mystery of eel mating habits may be revealed thanks to satellite technology. An EU-funded research project called Eeliad, used satellite tagging to keep track of 600 eels as they migrate. Researchers could track the satellite tags as far away as the Azores. This suggests that the eels are saving energy by hitching a ride on the Azores Current. bit.ly/12wb6PZ How much would you pay for a bluefin tuna? A fish fanatic in Japan has splashed out $1.76 million on a single specimen. The first auction of the year at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, saw the 222 kg tuna sell for 155.4 million yen, three times the previous record set last year. The winning bidder, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Co., which operates the Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, said, "the price was a bit high," but he wanted to "encourage Japan," according to Kyodo News agency. bit.ly/XqBLGs Here’s a question: how do you stop bananas ripening too quickly? The answer: wrap them in shrimp shells Researchers in China have come up with a secondary banana coat made from discarded shrimp shells. A hydrogel coating made of chitosan, derived from crustacean shells, can prevent a banana from becoming overripe for about two weeks, according to Xihong Li, lead author of a new banana study reported this week at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting. http://bit.ly/X934Zx
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major international initiative has been launched to better understand the role of aquaculture in food security in poor countries. Bringing together a global alliance of development agencies, governments and universities, the initiative will help low-income fooddeficit countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to develop sustainable policies for improving the livelihoods of millions of poor people. The European Union (EU) is funding the three-year project with one million euros, which is managed by FAO in partnership with a global alliance of 20 development agencies, governments and universities.
Pivotal role Fish is the primary source of protein for 17 percent of the world's population - nearly 25 percent in low-income food-deficit countries. Fish is also a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids benefit the heart and brain development of healthy people, and those at high risk of - or who have - cardiovascular disease. Nearly 50 percent of the fish that we eat now comes from aquaculture. Although aquaculture is widely regarded to play a pivotal role in fighting hunger, little is known about its exact impact on food and nutrition security and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Given population growth projections, increasing demands for fish products with stable production of capture fisheries, aquaculture will need to expand to meet the future demand for fish.
Impact on food security The new partnership represents the world's regions where aquaculture plays a major role and supports the livelihoods of millions of small-scale fish farmers. It also includes key institutions with a strong expertise in research, development project implementation and dissemination. The project, Aquaculture for Food Security, Poverty Alleviation and Nutrition (AFSPAN) will develop new ways to quantify the contribution of aquaculture with better tools and more systematic and quantitative assessments. Moreover, it will elaborate strategies for improving the impact of aquaculture on food and nutrition security and poverty alleviation. "The project will work closely with fish farming communities and will focus on field research in many major aquaculture countries in the developing world. It will develop tools and methodologies to help key partners to develop policies geared to improving aquaculture's contribution to food and nutrition security," said Rohana Subasinghe, senior FAO expert on aquaculture and coordinator of the project.
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