18 DECEMBER 2017 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG Taiwan lies about 140 km east of China between 21° 45” and 25° 38” N and has an area of 35,961 km2. The Central Mountain Range runs from north to south down the island, occupying 50 percent of the total land area, leaving only about 30 percent as arable land. Despite the restricted availability of suitable land, Taiwan has a long history of aquaculture practice, more than 300 years. The practice of finfish culture in Taiwan can be traced to the 15th and 16th centuries, when emigrants from mainland China came to settle on the island. By the 1930s Taiwan already had an annual aquaculture production of about 20,000 t because of good water and soil quality, suitable climatic conditions, relatively high availability of naturally occurring fish fry and hardworking farmers. Fish is an important dietary animal protein in Taiwan. The FAO estimates that the per capita consumption was 35.4 kg/yr in 2013-2014 (FAO 2017). In 2016, of the total 1,299,741 t fisheries produced in Taiwan, 24 percent (314,048 t) was from aquaculture, ranking the country 17th in the world. Of the cultured species, tilapia (70,472 t) and hard clam (64,024 t) lead in production volume, followed by milkfish (53,551 t) and grouper (24,961 t) (Taiwan Fisheries Agency 2016). Taiwan has been one of the most important areas of aquaculture in the world. In addition to the factors mentioned previously, two major developments made possible Taiwan’s take-off as a world leader in aquaculture. One was the establishment of techniques for larviculture and the other was establishment of the use of formulated feeds as a standard aquaculture practice. Larviculture Techniques Techniques of larviculture have gradually developed from simply collecting stocking material from nature, to holding them for further use, to growing them in a pond, and to using modern, advanced facilities, practices and treatments for complete larviculture. In Taiwan, it was not until the early 1960s that modern techniques in larviculture began to evolve. A major success was the establishment of techniques for freshwater finfish propagation in grass carp and silver carp. Following that, propagation techniques for larviculture were established for tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon (1968), grey mullet Mugil cephalus (1969) and milkfish Chanos chanos (1978) at Tungkang Marine Laboratory (now TungKang Biotechnology An Overview of Aquaculture in Taiwan Ching-Fong Chang, Shi-Yen Shiau, Yu-Hung Lin and I-Chiu Liao Artificial propagation of grouper (photo by Mariculture Research Center, Fisheries Research Institute, Tainan, Taiwan) Larva production. Typical aquaculture farm in Taiwan. Giant grouper.
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