CROATIA
May it included an exhibition of fishing and processing equipment as well as a conference for the fishing sector. The event was very well attended with senior officials including Ante Mišura, Assistant Minister of Agriculture, and his counterparts from two other ministries, the Mayors of Zadar County and of Biograd, representatives from the Prime Minister's office and the President of Parliament, and other leading figures from the fisheries sector. The fishing conference included discussions on how modern technology could contribute to the productivity of the fishing industry while at the same time reducing pollution, as well as the importance of identifying suitable sites for the farming of fish and shellfish. Fishermen also used the occasion to protest at the costs of compliance with new legislation. A panel discussion was
attended by experts including Ante Mišura; Nedo Vrgocˇ, Director of the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries; Lav Bavcˇevic', Senior Fisheries Coordinator, Croatian Chamber of Trades and Crafts; Krstina Mišlov, Croatian Chamber of Economics; Mato Obrean, Croatian Chamber of Trades and Crafts; and Branimir Baždaric', Advisor for Fisheries and Aquaculture. They answered questions about Croatia‘s operational programme for fisheries and aquaculture, its implementation, the costs involved, and the benefits. The session on fishing was followed by one on FLAGs where the speaker from the Ministry of Agriculture spoke about the formation of a national network of FLAGs, which would support cooperation among Croatian FLAGs, fostering the sharing of knowledge and best
The first international fisheries conference to be held in Croatia was organised by Lostura. It was very well attended with senior representatives from the administration, research, and the fisheries sector.
practices. The main problems facing the FLAGs were also discussed including the funding procedure which demands that the FLAGs make all payments up front and are then reimbursed later, a condition which places a lot of pressure on the FLAGs.
The conference was a big success in terms of what it achieved and certainly served to profile the organisers, Lostura. The benefits of already having organised a big international event will become increasingly apparent as Lostura develops and starts implementing its strategy.
Pelagos Net Farma farms tuna for the Japanese market
As tuna quotas increase, prices falter The capture-based aquaculture of bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) is a well-developed activity in the Mediterranean. While most EU countries involved in this activity only fatten the fish, in Croatia tuna are farmed. This means reared for a minimum of 18 and up to 30 months.
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ncouraged by the seemingly insatiable demand for the fish in Japan companies in several countries around the Mediterranean, including Spain, Malta, Italy, Turkey, and Croatia capture wild tuna, fatten the fish in cages and harvest them when they reach a certain weight for export to Japan.
Recovery plan and strict control revives tuna stocks Croatia currently has four companies involved in the tuna www.eurofishmagazine.com
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fattening business. Pelagos Net Farma is based in Biograd some 30 km away from Zadar, where the company has just completed the construction of a storage facility for the frozen small pelagic fish used to feed the tuna it farms. Pelagos has also benefited from the increase in quotas, which went up from 86 tonnes in 2015 to 100 in 2016. Nenad Horvat, the director of Pelagos Net Farma explains that tuna fattening companies are limited not only by the quota but also the effort, as fishing this quota is restricted to a 30-day window
between 26 May and 24 June. Tuna are typically caught using purse seines with minor quantities of fish caught with tuna traps. As tuna tend to school by size the purse seine is a very efficient method of catching the fish and, importantly, is the only way to transfer the captured fish to the transport cages that are used to move the fish to the final on-growing cages. ICCAT rules stipulate that the fish have to be over 8 kg in weight (or 75 cm) when they are captured, and have to be grown to a minimum of 30 kg before they can be sold.
Fish grown to a minimum of 50 kg At Pelagos Net Farma the fish are grown for a minimum of 18 months and sometimes even 30, says Mr Horvat. This means that the fish that are caught in the 2016 season will be sold at the end of 2017 or the beginning of 2018 at which point the expected weight will be over 50 kg. Most of the fish we capture are around 10 kg in weight because the schools that we target usually comprise fish of around this weight, Mr Horvat explains. This
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