34 JUNE 2015 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG FIGURE 2. Sampling locations (A= Kendari Bay, B=Talia Bridge at the mouth of Kendari Bay, C= Wanggu River estuary). As the world’s largest archipelagic state, Indonesia has abundant freshwater and marine resources, with considerable economic potential. One of the most underutilized resources is microalgae and, to date, relatively little information is available about local Indonesian microalgal resources, despite their potential to be used as live feed in hatcheries for a number of marine species. Culture of microalgae has been carried out for many years in Indonesia and elsewhere using internationally recognized standard algal stains as live food for mollusks, shrimp, and fish culture during larval stages in the hatchery. However, with the demand for shrimp in local and international markets continuing to increase, the generation of hatchery seed stock has become a critical bottleneck in commercial shrimp farming. Prospecting for new strains of microalgae in Indonesia with even greater nutritional quality for shrimp and ease of culture at an industrial scale may be a means to improve and expand hatchery production. South East Sulawesi (122° E, 5° S) is a political province in Indonesia with great potential for unexploited microalgal resources because of the region’s abundant water resources as habitat for Isolation and Characterization of Microalgae Strains for Live Food in Sulawesi, Indonesia Wa Iba and Michael A. Rice microalgae, both in fresh and sea water. The province consists of the southern and southeast part of Sulawesi Island, a major island of Indonesia, as well as several adjacent smaller islands and the Tukangbesi Archipelago in the Banda Sea. The total land area of the province is about 38,140 km2, with a coastal sea of about 110,000 km2. South East Sulawesi consists of 12 political districts, comprising ten regencies and two cities, including Kendari, the provincial capital and most populated commercial center, and the city of Bau Bau, on Buton Island (Fig. 1). Kendari Bay and the Wanggu River are important aquatic habitat areas of South Eeast Sulawesi, supporting a wide variety of economic activities. Kendari Bay receives many human inputs, particularly in the form of sediment because of inappropriate land use in surrounding upland areas. The Wanggu River is one of the larger rivers in the Kendari municipal jurisdiction, connecting the agricultural uplands to the sea by draining into Kendari Bay. Inasmuch as most of the Kendari population lives in the Wanggu River watershed, Kendari Bay receives wastewater effluents from domestic and industrial sources. FIGURE 1. South East Sulawesi of Indonesia. Image from Maps of Indonesia by Peter Loud, www.peterloud.co.uk/indonesia/. A. B. C.
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