TOWNSVILLE, Queensland, Aust.--As global fish catches fall off, aquaculture will need a full tackle box of biotechnology to meet an expected sharp rise in demand for seafood by the year 2025, said keynote speaker Yonathan Zohar at the 6-day International Marine Biotechnology Conference here.
"Aquaculture, now a $45 billion industry, is the only way to supply enough seafood because of the continuing collapse of commercial marine fisheries," said Zohar who is director of the University of Maryland's Biotechnology Institute's Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB) in Baltimore, Md., USA. Even at its current rate of growth, however, aquaculture will still need to triple or quadruple output to meet demand, he said.
Biotechnology from COMB and other science centers is already improving aquaculture, Zohar said. But to bring fish production onto a par with farming of other livestock, new molecular and biotechnology tools will be required. "Seafood is the only commodity that is still at the stage of hunt-and-gather farming. Compare it with chickens and we are way behind the curve," he observed. Whereas people have improved the genetics, health, nutrition and reproduction of other livestock through centuries of husbandry and science, time may be far shorter for improving seafood crops, he said.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that 60 to 70 percent of fisheries in the world's oceans are threatened by over fishing. One out of every four fish eaten in the world is raised by aquaculture. There has been a 10 percent annual growth rate in the world aquaculture for several years in sequence, according to the FAO. The agency estimates that, between 2015 and 2025, aquaculture will have to produce one out of every two fish consumed in the world, but assuming the marine fisheries will stay the same.
Often illustrating with current research work underway, Zohar explained a list of "bottlenecks" or issues that biotechnology is helping solve in making aquaculture more productive, efficient thus profitable, diverse and environmentally sound.
He said that gene-cloning technology would lead to engineering fish that reproduce predictably year round, are stronger and grow faster, and are more efficient in converting feed into more nutritious meat.
In 30 years, most of aquaculture seafood in the world will be raised in closed systems that produce a high density of finfish and shellfish of a higher quality with no wastewater reaching streams and rivers. Advances in biological filter systems and computerized monitoring of water conditions of aquaculture tanks at COMB has led to successful spawning and raising of several marine species in warehouses in Baltimore, he said.
DNA fish vaccines will be developed for diluting in tanks of water, said Zohar, thus vaccinating hundreds of fish at once through the skin. (The science of developing fish vaccines, said Zohar, lags behind vaccines for other animals. The bottleneck is the inefficiency of injecting each fish with a vaccine.) He also predicted that biotechnology will lead to mass production of new industrial and pharmaceutical natural products from intensive culture of genetically improved marine microbes.
COMB is one of five centers of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI), a unique life sciences research and education arm of the University System of Maryland. One of UMBI's first two research centers founded in 1985, COMB has achieved international recognition as a center of excellence in the study, protection and enhancement of marine resources.