AQUACULTURE DEVELOPMENT IN EGYPT

Aquaculture is currently the largest single source of fish supply in Egypt accounting for almost 77 percent of the total fish production of the country in 2014 with over 99 percent produced from privately owned farms. The development and expansion of modern aquaculture began in Egypt two decades ago, with relative declining of capture fishery (344,791 tons in 2014), it becomes obvious that aquaculture is the only viable option for reducing the gap between fish production and consumption in Egypt. Aquaculture is practiced using a variety of systems with varying levels of technology. The majority of farmed fish are either freshwater species or those that can grow in brackish water while marine aquaculture farms are going on now. The majority of fish farms in Egypt can be classified as semi-intensive brackish water pond farms. Intensive aquaculture, in earthen ponds and tanks, is now developing rapidly to counter act the reduction in the total area available for aquaculture activity as well as the scarcity of water in some locations.

The high rate of return on investment in aquaculture has attracted a large number of small to middle level investors. The sector is becoming more sophisticated and diverse and this is also associated with a rapid expansion of the support activities such as feed mills and hatcheries as the number of fish hatcheries has drastically increased reaching over 560 in year 2014 and Wild fry collection stations increased from 69 in 2005 to 72 in year 2014. (GAFRD, 2014). In regard to feed mills, there are more than 16 fish feed manufacturing companies of commercial size while there are larger number of small to middle class sizes.

Historically, the first semi-intensive commercial-size farm in earthen ponds was built by the Government in 1961 using ploy - culture system. By the mid 1980s, annual aquaculture production had jumped from a mere 17 000 tones to 45 000 tones. The average annual production from these semi-intensive systems was in the range of 1.5-2.5 tons per hectare. Afterwards, during 1990s, aquaculture activities steadily developed whereas aquaculture production increased from 539,747 tons in 2005 to 1,137,091 tons in 2014.   The production from private fish farms amounted 916,757 tons, followed by 176,266 tons produced from cages and then 33,978 tons from rice fields.

Egyptian aquaculture is characterized by its narrow production basket dominated by tilapia that represented about 67%, followed by carps (17.5%), grey mullet 11% leaving only about 5.0% to other species which includes catfish, marine finfish and shrimp.