ROMANIA
Piscicola Botosani
Modern surveillance technology reduces poaching The carp farm Piscicola Botosani produces a variety of ďŹ sh species. Most of these are carps, predominantly common carp, but also Chinese carps. In addition, small amounts of other species including pike, catďŹ sh, and sturgeon are also farmed.
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wned by Gheorghe Nistor, Piscicola Botosani is a typical carp farm with ponds of varying sizes for the cultivation of fish. Mr Nistor has been working the farm since 1988, and is now producing some 800 t of fish.
Dam lakes and pools used for fish production The “ponds� include a large lake, four pools, and smaller ponds for overwintering and for use as hatcheries. Freshwater fish farming is often carried out on dam lakes, which are essentially reservoirs built for a variety of purposes of which fish farming is one. Other uses can be flood control, electricity generation, irrigation, water supply to a municipality, or some combination of these. Another type of water body used for fish farming is a pool, which refers again to a reservoir created by building a dam on a small river – but in this case the reservoir is created specifically to farm fish. Not all Mr Nistor’s pools are functional as some need considerable maintenance work before they can be used for fish farming. Currently, therefore, the water surface that is being used amounts to some 680 ha out of a total of about 850 ha. The farm produces some 400 tonnes of table-sized fish and
Gheorghe Nistor, an engineer by training, produces 800 tonnes of fish from his carp farm including both table-sized fish and stocking material.
another 400 tonnes of stocking material each year. This output is comprised of different species. Polyculture of fish in ponds, where different species are grown together, is more sustainable than monoculture as the fish live off the different trophic levels in the pond. In
addition, carnivorous fish will prevent over-population and competition for feed among prey species. The ponds need regular maintenance if yields are to be optimised and Mr Nistor has invested in bulldozers, tractors, and excavation equipment to renovate some of the pools and
the dykes. The smaller hatchery ponds are almost completely renovated, he says. However, to his frustration, an application for support from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) to renovate one of the other pools was rejected, for what he considers trivial
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