Aquaculture updates from Palau (09/2008)
Monday, 01 September 2008 00:00

By Ben Ponia

 

While attending the FFC Fisheries Ministerial Conference in Palau, SPC’s Aquaculture Adviser, Ben Ponia, took the opportunity to make some site visits and meet with people involved in aquaculture and coastal fisheries, including:

 - Ngatpang State milkfish farm project. Located about an hour’s drive from Koror the farm receives up to 2.4 million fingerlings per year from Taiwan.

Seventy-five per cent are farmed for live bait and the remainder are left to grow larger to be sold as food fish. Staff involved in the project have recently received training in fish de-boning techniques, which makes the product much more marketable. The project is largely funded by Ngatpang State, with technical advice and labour provided by Philippine expatriate staff.

- Local fish outlets in Koror: PMCI Fish Market and Happy Fish Market. We discussed reef fisheries, processing, marketing issues, etc with the owners and staff.

- Palau Mariculture Demonstration Centre (PMDC), operated by Palau’s Bureau of Marine Resources. The PMDC continues to produce large quantities of giant clams in its hatchery. The most common species is Tridacna Derasa, which are provided to villages for community grow-out schemes. The PMDC fish hatchery is also active with a large batch of hatchery-reared tiger groupers and rabbitfish juveniles in production. Other fish species, such as Napoleon wrasse and coral trout, are being conditioned for future spawning. The fish hatchery manager, Percy Rechelluul, is collaborating with various private businesses and state projects (including the Ngatpang milkfish farm) to provide rabbitfish for cage culture trials. The PMDC also hopes to produce milkfish fry from its hatchery in the future.

- Accompanied by Bureau of Marine Resources staff, the Aquaculture Adviser viewed some PMDC sites where rabbitfish cage culture trials were being conducted. This included the Rip Tide Restaurant, which has two cages, each holding 2,000 fish that are five months old; the Airai company farm, which has six cages, each with more then 2,000 fish; Neco Marine Ltd, which has a small trial cage with rabbitfish and milkfish. This company plans to build its own rabbitfish hatchery for a large fish farm.

- SPC’s Aquaculture Adviser and other senior SPC staff assisted the Bureau of Marine Resources in an intensive one-day workshop to draft a new Coastal Fisheries and Aquaculture National Development Plan.