USSEC recently provided aquaculture technical service in Colombia.  Consultants Jairo Amezquita and John Hargreaves visited aquaculture farms in the Betania and Tota Lakes regions.

During the first part of their trip, they visited two farms at Betania Lake to collect information and provide recommendations related to currents such as the average current speed at the Betania Reservoir; profiles of current speed with depth; the direction of water flow; and the fish population of the farms.  After these visits, the consultants participated in a seminar at Neiva organized by two of their clients’ aqua feed producers.  Mr. Amezquita gave a presentation titled “USSEC’s Role in Aquaculture Development in Latin America” and presented a video about the sustainability of tilapia production.  He emphasized the current situation of the aquaculture industry in Colombia, Latin America and the world, as well as discussing opportunities to diversify through the use of new species.  Mr. Amezquita also talked about statistics and the results of feeding trials with U.S. soybean meal, soy protein concentrate and isolate in aqua species’ diets.  Mr. Hargreaves gave a presentation called “Carrying Capacity in Betania:  Additional Thoughts.”  More than 45 people involved in tilapia and native species production farming operations in the Betania Lake region attended this seminar.
For the second part of this trip, the consultants traveled to the Tota Lake area where they visited four trout farms on the lake to collect information related to trout production, carrying capacity, biomass and the current situation of the lake in order to understand reasons for mortalities that occurred last year.  Finally, they participated in a seminar in Duitama where Mr. Hargreaves gave a presentation entitled “Carrying Capacity in Tota Lake” and Mr. Amezquita again spoke about USSEC’s role in developing aquaculture in Latin America.