CROATIA
Crna Mlaka, a farm with 645 ha of ponds combines fish cultivation with a bird sanctuary, and is a protected site under the Ramsar Convention.
Crna Mlaka needs a different business model
Bird sanctuary threatens viability of ďŹ sh farm The freshwater farming industry in Croatia though not large has consistently produced around 6,000 tonnes for the decade up to 2012. The fact that this volume has not increased can be attributed to several factors and in this Croatia mirrors the rest of the EU, where aquaculture production has stagnated for years. In the rest of the world aquaculture is the fastest-growing animal protein production industry and it is expected to make an increasingly signiďŹ cant contribution to health and nutrition, global food security and employment among marginalised communities. The European Common Fisheries Policy recognises the potential of aquaculture and hopes to change the stagnation that dogs the sector in Europe by improving the policy framework so that it too can contribute to the economic and social wellbeing of coastal and other communities. In Croatia the freshwater farming sector comprises the warm water cultivation of cyprinids (chiefly common carp, grass carp, bighead carp, and silver carp) and the cold water production of salmonids (rainbow trout). The warm water species are usually farmed extensively in large earthen ponds in polyculture. These ponds often include small volumes of the carnivorous species pike perch and pike that apart 44
Eurofish Magazine 5 / 2014
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from being valuable themselves are also useful in holding down the proportion of trash fish, species of no commercial value that enter the ponds through the water supply. There are approximately 30 pond farms in Croatia and the bigger ones in particular, because of the large water area, the presence of the fish, and the rural setting in which they exist, attract other birds and animals, many of which feed on fish.
Low density, environmentally friendly farming This has attracted the ire of fish farmers as the predators can do considerable damage to their stocks of fish. Beavers build unwelcome dams that can interfere with the flow of water into and out of the ponds, cormorants and herons both feed on the young fish and injure larger individuals resulting
either in secondary mortalities a few days later or leaving them too damaged to be farmed further, and other birds eat the feed that is intended for the fish. Farmers respond by shooting the predators or rigging up systems to scare them away. There is however one farm where the birds and animals are left completely undisturbed. This is Crna Mlaka, a farm with 645 ha of ponds owned by Ivan Prepolec an entrepreneur with a background in www.eurofishmagazine.com