Features

Having worked in biotechnology investment and then as a pioneering seaweed and mussel farmer, Paul Dobbins was persuaded to come out of retirement for the second time to work on WWF’s programmatic and investment work and he now intends to galvanise the fledgli…

Danijel Gospic is currently looking to raise investment to build a 10,000 tonne vertically integrated African catfish farm in Croatia.

The scorching heat and low rainfall in Bangladesh in the beginning of summer have had devastating effects on the shrimp industry, particularly in Satkhira district, in the Khulna division.*

L’Esturgeonnière is France’s only sturgeon farm that both hatches its own fish and sells its own caviar, under the Perlita brand – selling it to more than 30 countries around the globe.

Zoramhluna, the founder of Zo Aquatics - a company that farms and sells a range of ornamental fish in the India's northeast state of Mizoram - believes that the sector is set to grow has scope grow.

At the age of only 19 Sander Kristiansen began managing a farm containing over a million salmon, and – one year later – he’s also in the process of designing his own unique fish farm service vessel.

The Fish Site columnist Proscovia Alando is planning to launch the first ever comprehensive independent analysis of the Kenyan aquaculture sector – in a bid to determine the number of farmers, their total production capacity, the key challenges they n…

Vincent Doumeizel, author of The Seaweed Revolution, believes that seaweed can help replace many of the worst elements of conventional contemporary agriculture and help to feed the growing global population.

Mia Avril from Castries, Saint Lucia, who has assisted in the growth of aquaculture in Trinidad, Jamaica, Dominica and the Bahamas, is a firm believer in on-farm aquafeed production and aquaponics.

Cyril Barbier is the hatchery and production manager at Gårdsfisk, an indoor farming operation in southern Sweden that aims to produce 550 tonnes of tilapia and African catfish this year.

Ireland’s Pure Ocean Algae has finished building a 600 m² seaweed hatchery building on the Beara peninsula, hoping to address the industry’s biomass bottleneck and set it on the path to success.

Kamuthanga, a tilapia and catfish RAS farm in eastern Kenya, has ambitious plans to double production by 2025.

Aquaculture startup Seafields aims to remove billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year by growing and harvesting Sargassum in the South Atlantic Gyre, as John Auckland – co-founder and director – explains.

ZR Thahmingliana started a carp farm to honour the last wish of his father, who wanted to make the small state of Mizoram in northeast India self-reliant in fish production.

Ewan McAsh is the founder and CEO of Oceanfarmr (originally SmartOysters) – a startup that aims to streamline production and open up access to finance for 400,000 producers of oysters, mussels and seaweed around the world.

Helped by several initiatives from the government of Manipur, in north-east India, fish farmers have increased production substantially, but scientists feel that the state has not yet fulfilled its true aquaculture potential.

Peter Green, founder of Paxtier – an algae tech innovation newsletter and community – shares his thoughts on the sector’s most promising startups and some of the key emerging trends.

Vietnamese shrimp tech startup, Tepbac, recently landed a $2.25 million investment from Aqua-Spark*, AgFunder and Son-Tech Investment to scale its technology to digitise shrimp farming in Vietnam. Angela Tay, senior investment associate at AgFunder Asia, expla…

Pacu – which are also called tambaqui, pirapitinga, cachama, morocoto, or gamitana – are among the fish with the greatest potential to challenge the dominance of carps and tilapias in tropical freshwater aquaculture, especially if geneticists succeed in elimin…

Oluwasikemi Olabisi is the director of The FarmLady Aquatics Limited, a consulting company that helps prospective and existing catfish farmers through training, mentoring and production of healthy catfish juveniles.

Felix Collins, founder and managing director of Full Circle Biotechnology, believes that the company’s super-intensive “Black Box” – which is designed to produce 6,000 tonnes of insect and microbial protein with only a 1,500 m2 footprint – will dramatically re…

The rise of the offshore wind industry is a fantastic opportunity for the seaweed aquaculture sector, according to David Lamb, founder of Cultivocean.

Enos Were, the managing director of Jewlet Fish Farms, is a pioneer who has transformed East Africa’s aquaculture industry by training countless fish farmers, researchers and government officials, as well as developing his own successful independent farm.

A new project, involving researchers from Glasgow University and Kelpcrofting, a seaweed farming startup, is investigating the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) to predict biofouling of cultured seaweed and planktonic threats to farmed salmon.

Alternative proteins are often cited as being better – environmentally, ethically and nutritionally – than farmed seafoods, but the reality is much more complex and far less clear-cut than some alt-protein evangelists realise.

Robins Macintosh makes a compelling case for the merits of faster growing shrimp lines, countering the widespread belief that strains which have been selected purely for growth are always likely to have lower rates of survival.

After studying marine biology and aquaculture in university and learning the ropes at her own shrimp farm in Ecuador, Janeth Chavez Zambrano is turning her hand to indoor shrimp farming with SwissShrimp.

Seaducer, a French startup, has developed the Roll’Oyster – an innovative and low maintenance system for producing oysters in sheltered coastal areas.

Hans-Arne Frantzen, an undergraduate at Nord University, has been putting in an impressive shift working for a variety of aquaculture companies in his spare time – from hands-on farming jobs to helping identify investment opportunities in the sector.

After working in Namibia, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia and Australia, Albert Ferrer Lladosa’s most recent venture has been managing an indoor shrimp farm in Greece.

Brandon Hargraves, founder and CEO of The Aquaculture Group, outlines an ambitious plan to establish 250-hectare sandfish farm in the Philippines.

Marine permaculture, the macroalgae aquaculture system developed by The Climate Foundation, seeks to harness wave energy to restore natural nutrient upwelling and grow seaweed at scale. If initial trials continue to be successful, it could be a feasible way to…

Carla Phillips Savage, who is currently an associate professor at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, discusses her journey to become the only certified aquatic veterinarian in Trinidad and highlights the need for more aquatic animal health p…

Regenerative and restorative aquaculture operations, such as seaweed farms, can be economically – as well as ecologically – sound, according to two of the key players in the space.

There are those who argue that farming is a way of life and not a business, but in today's modern, competitive and global agriculture/agribusiness environment, that mindset is the quickest way to lose money.

Bert Wecker, founder of Neomar, believes that farming tropical shrimp in temperate countries is on the verge of being highly profitable, and that the sector is all set for expansion, both in Europe and North America.

Using a multi-phase shrimp farming system, which includes an intermediary nursery stage between hatcheries and grow-out ponds, can increase productivity, reduce the time to harvest and improve farm management.

Senegal needs to step up its domestic oyster aquaculture sector to better meet domestic demand, according to Amy Gaye, FISH4ACP’s national professional officer in Senegal, who has been working on a new project for FISH4ACP.

A new study showed that processed animal proteins improved growth, performance, gut health and microbiota composition, while also easing intestinal inflammation of rainbow trout.

The production of insects for aquafeeds is only going to gain momentum in the coming years, although there are still a number of challenges – in particular relating to regulations regarding the feedstocks for fly larvae – to overcome.