For the Balance of Marine Stocks

The Turkish General Directorate of Fisheries and Aquaculture, aiming to balance marine stocks, has supported and prioritized aquaculture — keeping the capture sector stable while increasing aquaculture two and a half times over the past decade. These incentives have benefited the protection of marine stocks. Aquaculture is based on rearing larvae stocked from the sea and inland waters; the economic return of these products requires following a process of care and feeding over a set period until they reach commercial size.

When its added value to nature and the country is properly analyzed, aquaculture contributes to the natural balance; however, the capacities of aquaculture facilities can never be equated with breeding stocks in the wild. So what needs to be done?

Fisheries in Turkey have always been handled under two headings: capture and aquaculture, and analyses have always been based on figures covering these two. Worldwide, the system is now handled under three headings: in more than ten countries — and in the projects Lobster Research takes part in — Free Hatchery systems are gaining ever more importance. Although these projects may be perceived as aquaculture, the system does not work that way; applying aquaculture laws and rules to these projects would be the wrong approach. New legislation should be introduced for these projects, or they should be brought under public administration.

Free Hatchery enables ten times more product to be restocked into the wild than the total of everything produced through aquaculture in Turkey. It requires no large land-based facilities; the project involves no high costs and brings diversity and abundance in a very short time.

So how does the system work? Let us take the lobster as an example. Two lobster species live in Turkey's marine ecosystem: the European lobster and the American lobster. Both are on the verge of extinction in Turkey and are products of very high economic value. As elsewhere in the world, it takes four years for a lobster to reach commercial size in Turkey, so conventional farming is not viable — the income-expense balance does not hold.

Global capture production of lobster is roughly 50,000 tonnes; 38,000 tonnes of it is supplied by the United States and Canada, followed by the United Kingdom, Japan and France. Declining stocks under continuous fishing led to the development of a new system: because broodstock lobsters go through an eleven-month spawning process and eggs have a survival chance as low as 0.1%, Lobster Free Hatchery systems came into use in 2009.

In the Lobster Free Hatchery system, females carry an average of 20,000 eggs under their abdomen. Fed 2–3 times a day, the juveniles molt four times before reaching the development stage. After 20 days they are separated one by one into 140-slot trays and move to the 27-litre aquarium stage. At the end of 30 days the trays are removed from the aquarium and the juveniles are released into the wild. This system increases survival rates by 50%; a single system has the capacity to rear 100,000 juveniles.