During the last three decades aquaculture has expanded rapidly. In 2022, for the first time in history, aquaculture surpassed capture fisheries with the production of more than 94 million tons of aquatic animals. Artemia has played, a crucial role in the sustainable production of marine fish and shrimp worldwide, and continues to do so. Annually, more than 10 million tons of marine fish and shrimp production relies heavily on Artemia, and it is therefore crucial that we continue to implement sustainable management of all Artemia resources worldwide.
Today, Great Salt Lake produces approximately 40 % of the world’ s Artemia cysts and is therefore vital to support sustainable marine aquaculture production. A daptive management of the Great Salt Lake Artemia resource started in the mid-1990s with the creation of the Great Salt Lake Ecosystem program by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources . Three decades of research focused on the four primary pillars of sustainable management of the Great Salt Lake Artemia resource i.e., the implementation of adaptive harvest management, nutrient management, salinity management and water supply.
We provide an overview of the extremophile Artemia’s habitats, its lifecycle and role in marine aquaculture and briefly review the efforts implemented by multiple Utah State agencies and the Utah State legislature on the four primary aspects of h ypersaline lake management. We further detail the most recent implementation of active salinity management by the Utah Department of Forestry Fire and State L ands, which examines salt mass and salinity data in support of these management actions as well as the positive outcome on the Great Salt Lake Artemia population. Finally, we contrast the Great Salt Lake c yst production against other world resources and conclude that efforts to manage Artemia resources have resulted in an increase in the worldwide production of Artemia cysts in support of marine aquaculture.