Fish farming takes off at Golden Pine, Bulolo

Caption: Frank Vidinamo of NARI preparing a cage for the fish culturing project in Lake Warabum at Golden Pine, Bulolo

 

By FRANK VIDINAMO

 

Inland aquaculture or fish farming is one of the fastest-growing industries in Papua New Guinea as well as countries in the South East Asian region.

 Currently, the National Agriculture Research Institute, through its livestock research programme, is promoting inland aquaculture in which scientists are involved in feed formulation, fish farming systems, information and outreach activities and the promotion of cage culture system.

In February 2009, a pilot cage culture project was established in Lake Warabum at Golden Pine in the Bulolo district to monitor and evaluate GIFT tilapia fish farming using the cage culture system.

Preliminary observations were that within two months the GIFT tilapia showed remarkable growth from 10g to 100g live weight.

At this growth rate, fish are expected to reach 200g or table size ready for sale or consumption by the end of June this year.

According to Riggo Nangan, a local who is in charge of the project, the whole community of Golden Pine, Vidipos and Baiyune areas could benefit from this trial.

 At the moment there are 32 existing natural lakes in the area and fish farming using cage culture system has a huge potential if the community can adopt this new technology.

He said with the damage of Watut River from soil sediments washed into the river system from the new mining activities upstream, the river was not suitable for drinking, fishing or for any form of fresh water fish farming.

“Therefore, people are overfishing the existing lakes to supplement their diet, which is putting a lot of stress on the number of native fish species found in the lakes,” Mr Nangan said.

“The project is timely and relevant and government authorities, both at the local and national level, should look into this project and help the people in the area to start farming fish using cage culture system in the numerous natural lakes in the areas as a way to improve food and nutrition security.

“Other livestock species such as ducks, sheep and goats can as well be tested and promoted to improve supply of food protein in the area with technical assistance from NARI.”