MARINE ORNAMENTAL AQUACULTURE IN BRAZIL: NEED FOR RESEARCH AND INTEGRATION BETWEEN UNIVERSITIES AND BREEDERS  

Brazil is a country in the aquaculture spotlight, with its intensive production of Tilapia and Whiteleg Shrimp. While successful in the aquaculture for the food industry and despite having over 8.000 km of coastline, Brazil is still taking its first steps in marine ornamental aquaculture. Although having a large market (more than 30,000 organisms are traded monthly), over 300 marine aquarium stores and 10 large-scale importers/wholesalers, Brazil has less than 10 marine ornamental breeders and most of the aquacultured marine ornamental fish in Brazil is imported. As a consequence, prices are extremely high as well as import mortality rates. In order to explore and paint a picture on this scenario, this study gathered information on key players in the ornamental trade, both in Brazil and abroad. These include breeders, wholesalers and research labs in universities. Major findings show that Brazilian breeders produce much less volume and diversity than its foreign counterparts and that only a single Brazilian breeder cooperates with a university. While foreign universities have produced several pioneering protocols for species that are now being mass-produced, Brazilian universities have produced pioneering protocols for less than a handful of species. The data collected in this study show that the main obstacles to the development of Brazilian ornamental aquaculture include (1) lack of communication between the scientific community and commercial breeders, (2) restricted access to important aquaculture products (i. e. concentrated algae and copepods) and (3) intense government bureaucracy and lack of data and statistics. Therefore, it is important that universities, commercial breeders and government agencies communicate and unite in order to overturn this negative scenario.