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Mariculture
INTRODUCTION
Based on the latest statistics, the worldwide catch of marine fish was 8·35 million tons in 2011, only a 0·16% increase from 10 years ago (FAO, 2013). On the other hand, production of cultured marine fish is rapidly increasing, with production being 3·89 million tons in 2011, a 69·5% increase from 10 years ago (FAO, 2013). Among them, salmonid culture in Europe, North America and Chile comprises 55·9% of the total mariculture production, followed by those of carangids (0·28 million tons or 7·2% of the total production), sparids (0·26 million tons; 6·6%) and percichthyids and moronids (0·24 million tons; 6·2%). With respect to helminth parasitic diseases of cultured marine fishes, few serious helminth infections are known to occur among maricultured salmonids, whereas carangid, sparid, percichthyid and serranid fishes have important helminth diseases.
Traditionally marine fish were cultured in coastal ponds and natural coastal enclosures. These culture systems were practiced on a small scale, compared with the large-scale floating net cage system which appeared around 1960, which was first adopted for culture of Japanese amberjack Seriola quinqueradiata (Eng and Tec, 2002). Typically, cages are cubic with one side of 10 m or smaller in size. This system spread rapidly in western Japan, as it has many advantages over the traditional methods in terms of water exchange, cost for setup and maintenance, management of fishes in cages and applicability to other marine fish species. Recently, new types of larger net cages and offshore cages for bluefin tunas and submerged cages in rough areas have appeared (Beveridge, 2002). Net cages are not suitable for some fishes. Flat fishes like bastard halibut, Paralichthys olivaceus, are mainly cultured in land-based tanks with flow-through sea water.
In mariculture, fish are introduced into farm sites in the form of culture seed, either wild-caught or artificially produced. With the progress of artificial seed production techniques, the latter type is used more frequently. The former type is still the main source of seed for Japanese amberjack and greater amberjack, Seriola dumerili, because juveniles are caught in large numbers without any sign of overfishing and generally wild-caught juveniles have fewer health problems.
Traditionally marine fish are fed with chopped or minced raw trash fish. However,...