USSEC’s Southeast Asia aquaculture team recently visited and met with Vietnamese government organizations and farm operators to learn about the policy, license, study, and constraints for the development of offshore aquaculture in Khánh Hoà Province, where offshore aquaculture was recently introduced.
Potential investors do not yet have a clear definition of offshore farming and no model from which to learn. They are looking at how to minimize risk and how to develop this industry sustainably. Some of their concerns are biosecurity, market, services, and genetic. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), in their 2030-2050 planning, expected foreign investors with experience and technology to join Vietnam offshore aquaculture.
At Nha Trang University, Institute for Aquaculture, marine pond fish culture was started in 1985 by investors from Hong Kong with black grouper (E. malabaricus & E. coioides) using wild catch fingerlings. Today, marine fish farming has expanded to a larger area, especially in Cam Ranh City with diverse cultured species, including grouper, Asian sea bass, cobia, pompano, red drum, and red snapper. However, average yield per year is still low for marine fish pond culture. Farmers’ concept of feeding was very much toward trash fish, even though they realized that complete feed could offer better feed conversion ratios (FCR). In the last month before harvest, they used trash fish t achieve more attractive parameters for the end users’ perception (darker skin color, meat texture, etc.)
USSEC technical support covers the whole long value chain from brood stock to growout, with specific programs including optimized soy in extruded pellet feed. The In Pond Raceway System (IPRS) could be useful for farmers in Khanh Hoà Province. More feeding demonstrations will be done to show the value of USSEC feed-based technologies and promote U.S. Soy products and USSEC will help the fish farmers to use IPRS correctly.
USSEC marine fish culture technology promotes sustainability.