Fisheries research guides the way to better farmed barramundi

Better tasting barramundi, with healthy management and feeding strategies developed by WA Department of Fisheries research, is helping fish farmers develop new opportunities.

Research scientist Dr Brett Glencross said aquaculture was on a very fast growth path, with the catches of wild fish stocks having little or no scope for growth around the world.

"The department has had one of the most active research and development programs on barramundi production, since 2002, providing valuable information for companies that are managing large scale fish farming projects,"  Dr Glencross said.

"With support from Federal bodies like the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC), we've been able maintain critical research momentum on this growing industry sector.

"Our work has been focussed on feed design and feed management, but we've also paved the way for the introduction of vaccines to treat diseases and, through the research, found a way to help improve the taste of farmed freshwater barramundi.

"Technology has been developed to manage the purging of fish, to ensure they don't taste 'muddy', which was once a major marketing hurdle for barramundi farmed in freshwater."

Dr Glencross said a factor like muddy taste was not a problem for saltwater-farmed barramundi, however, ocean-based farms, such as the Cone Bay aquaculture facility at Turtle Island in the remote Buccaneer Archipelago, had also benefitted from many research-developed strategies.

"The Cone Bay farm, off the Kimberley coast, is expected to soon produce around 20 thousand kilos of barramundi a week and it is satisfying to see many of our production models and ideas being adopted at Australia's largest saltwater barramundi farm, as well as others,"  he said.

"Our development work, the most recent of which has been carried out at the Department of Fisheries research complex at Hillarys, is now being actively used by both feed companies and barramundi farming enterprises across Australia.

"We have also kept ahead of the climate change challenge, by developing diets that allow fish to deal better with higher water temperatures. Through this, we now understand the physiological processes occurring in high water temperature stress."

More information on this project is available online in Fisheries Research Report FRR168, based on work jointly funded by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and the Department of Transport and Regions' Sustainable Regions Program.