MEDIA RELEASE

MIDDLE EAST & CENTRAL ASIA AQUACULTURE 2015
Tehran, Iran – 14-16 December, 2015

This First Middle East and Central Asia Aquaculture Conference with the theme: ’Tapping New Markets in Aquaculture’ includes several events. Asian Pacific Aquaculture 2015 is the annual meeting of the Asian Pacific Chapter of the World Aquaculture Society. The Middle East Aquaculture forum is the second of its kind in the region and focuses on industry presentations. The International Shrimp Symposium 2015 will be part of this event. Besides, the conference with focus on Marine Fish, Shrimp, Sturgeon, Trout and Offshore mariculture, MECAA15 also includes an International Aquaculture Exhibition. MECAA15 is hosted by the Iranian Fisheries Research Institute.

This event is expecting over 500 Iranian and International Aquaculture Experts.

Time to register now: >www.meaf.ae.

Workshop:

There will be 4 workshop during this event. The first day Badinotti is organizing a Cage Culture Workshop, while our Shrimp experts will organize a Shrimp culture Workshop. The Trout and Sturgeon workshop will be organized on December 15^th.

Exhibition:

There are still a few booths available. Please contact mario@marevent.com.

December 14-16, 2015. More info on www.was.org and >www.meaf.ae.

Thank you and see you in Tehran, The MECAA15 Team

Status of Aquaculture in Iran
Homayoun Hosseinzadeh Sahafi

Iranian Fisheries Science Research Institute, Agricultural Research and Education Organization (AREZO) ,Tehran, Iran

E.mail:h_hosseinzadeh@ifro.ir

With reference to precedence of 2000 years of fish culture in the world, this activity has been started in Iran with Sturgeon breeding and rainbow trout in 1922 and 1959, respectively.

The initial efforts, in the 1970‘s , were directed towards development of hatchery techniques for Fingerling production of the valuable Caspian Sea species , such as Sturgeon and Rutilus (Rutilus frisi kutum ). This approach was also adopted for other indigenous species, rainbow trout and chinese carp, the latter of which have become the major speacies for freshwater aquaculture.The contribution of aquaculture to fishery production has been progressively increased the production of 3219 t. in 1978 (1% of total fishery production) to 65000 tones by the 1996 (13 % of total Fishery production).Fish production thought aquaculture reached 325000 tons in 2013.

Development of aquaculture has since been expanded to cover most of the 25 provinces in the country, with coastal aquaculture being introduced recently for the production of highly esteemed marine products. In order to increase the shrimp Population in the Persian Gulf, Aquaculture department started a joint project with UNDP in Hormozgan province, which established a pilot hatchery for shrimp production in 1987 resulted in the production was about 1240 million PL and 13000 tons of shrimp in 2013. Warm water fish ponds [2 ha < farm (area) ha < 100 ha.] are found all over the country, but Majority of them are located in Gilan and Mazandaran provinces in the north and Khouzestan Province in the south Inland water recourse (0.5 million from 5 million hectares) including reservoirs, Lagoon, natural water body and dam lakes were subjected to releasing fish finger lings. Cold water farms are distributed in the eight provinces of west Azerbaijan. Fars, Tehran, Lorestan Mazandaran, Zanjan, Kohkiloyeh-Boir Ahmad and Chaharmahal Bakhtiari. Trout production has started in 1959 and total production was about 23140 ton in 2003 and it’s increased Up to 14400 tons in 2013.

In order to enhance the Caspian Sea fisheries, inland water bodies and aquaculture activities artificial breeding of various fish species was seriously considered. The number of fingerling production increased in 2003 and 2013 with 507 million and 1038.5 million respectively. It seems that the production of aquaculture will reach to 400000 mt/year at the end of 5th five years development plan (i.e.2015). In this regard, according to the Statistic Fisheries Organization, improving of Iranian fisheries’s achievement in last decade is showen in tabale1. In order to achieve sustainability in aquaculture and rural development, the government has catered for the provisions of their activities, such as: credits, infrastructure, training and technical assistance moreover fisheries of Iran have high readiness for cooperation with the countries, international and regional agencies, experienced in these fields.

Table1: Number of fish fingerling releasing (typical species) over the 2003 and 2013 in the Iranian reach of the Caspian Sea