TURKEY
Adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change
Turkish aquaculture records another year of growth Compared to 2019, production in the Turkish aquaculture sector increased 13% to 421 thousand tonnes in 2020 according to the Turkish Statistical Institute.
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nland water aquaculture is overwhelmingly dominated by the cultivation of salmonids, mainly rainbow trout, which account for 30 of total (both marine and inland) farmed fish production. Marine aquaculture is represented primarily by seabass (35) and seabream (26). In 2020, there was a huge increase (90) in the production of a sea-raised rainbow trout to over 18,000 tonnes. Taken together, these three species (rainbow trout, seabass, seabream) accounted for 96 of Turkish farmed fish production (freshwater and marine) in 2020, a picture that has not really changed since the 80s when production from fish farming first made it into government statistics.
Marine farmed fish production is twice that of farmed freshwater fish However, in the second half of the 80s marine farmed fish output comprehensively overtook that from freshwater. Today it is more than double thanks to developments in feed and cage technologies and the push by the government to site marine cages offshore, where they do not conflict with other activities closer to the coast, and where there is more space to expand. The inland aquaculture sector is more fragmented than the marine farming 32
From left, Mahir Kanyılmaz, Head of Fisheries Resoruces Managment and Fisheries Structure; Gülser Fidancı, Aquculture Department; Mustafa Altuø Atalay, General Director, General Directorate Fisheries and Aquaculture; Turgay Türkyılmaz, Deputy General Director, General Directorate Fisheries and Aquaculture; Tanju Özdemirden, Head of Aquaculture Department
industry—where there are some 430 companies producing fish in the sea, there are almost 1,700 companies operating in inland waters, according to Altug Atalay and Özerdem Maltas in an article in Marine Aquaculture in Turkey*. Seabass and seabream are native to the Mediterranean and companies in Turkey (and other Mediterranean countries) have largely solved the obstacles that arose in the 80s when the cultivation of these two species started in
earnest. Understanding the biology of the fish, developing feeding protocols, and establishing hatcheries with broodstock to produce eggs and larvae went side by side with the evolution of farming technologies contributing to a steady expansion in production over the last three and a half decades. In 2021 Turkish companies put some 550m juveniles into cages and next year they expect that number to increase to 600m. At least one company is also exporting part of the production from its hatchery. Cages for seabass and seabream
are found in the Aegean and the Mediterranean, while in the Black Sea seabass and rainbow trout are on-grown. The cages are placed at least 1,100 m from the coast in water that is a minimum of 30 m in depth. These regulations were introduced in 2007 and, although the industry grumbled at the time at the additional expense, it has led to the accumulation of knowledge and expertise in offshore cage building, mooring technology, and other infrastructure that Turkey now exports to countries in the region.
www.eurofishmagazine.com
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