Aquaculture Essay

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CHAPTER ONE 1.0. INTRODUCTION Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic animals and plants e.g. fish, crustaceans, mollusk, reptiles, amphibians and aquatic plants in confirmed water body or enclosures. This involves human intervention in the process (e.g. stocking, feeding, harvesting, etc.) to enhance production. Aquaculture embraces the use and manipulation of natural and artificial bodies of water to produce the species required by man, and thus deals with all the activities concerned with breeding and culture of aquatic organisms. Aquaculture is generally used to denote: • The type of culture techniques or systems e.g. Pond culture, cage culture, pen culture, raft culture, raceway culture etc. • The type of organisms cultured, e.g. …show more content…

It is the world’s fastest growing segments of agriculture system in past decades, with an overall growth rate of 11% a year since 1984. The farming of fish which is the most common form of aquaculture, involves raising fish commercially in ponds, tanks, river enclosures usually for food. In Nigeria, fish culture is carried out on small to large commercial scale. Present annual aquaculture production is about 50-60,000 tonnes contributing only 5% of total domestic production while capture fisheries account for over 855 of national production. The demand for fish in Nigeria has increased from 1-2million metric tonnes in 1989 to about 2.5million metric tonnes, while the present production is only 20% of the estimated yearly potential. There has been noticeable global upsurge for aquaculture in the last decades as a result of increased and continuous rise in the cost of fishing operators, persistent demand for fish which is in short supply. This has greatly promoted interest in aquaculture. The African catfish Clarias gariepinus is the fish most in demand and is the species of choice for consumers, fish farmers and hatcheries while the demand for tilapia is growing. Demand for other fish species is

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