Cage fish farming can revolutionise sea food industry: experts

MULTAN: Cage fish farming cannot only meet Pakistan’s sea food protein requirements, but it can also bring huge foreign exchange by exporting variety of fish to other countries.

Talking to reporters, Dr Naheed Bano, Assistant Professor at Animal Sciences Department Muhammad Nawaz Sharif University of Agriculture, (MNSUA), stated that cage fish farming would benefit private industry and create hundreds of thousands of job opportunities in the country.

She disclosed natural running water was important for this type of farming adding that dams, natural lakes, head works located in upper parts of Punjab and KPK could easily be utilized for this purpose.

Sea food industry in Vietnam is earning $7 billion with only two rivers, while Pakistan is blessed with more rivers, wide coastal areas, canals and several lakes including Keenjhar and Manchar lakes, she highlighted and said China touched $33 billion and Thailand was fetching $12 billion by its export.

Dr Naheed said the nets used for cage fish farming could be purchased from Denmark, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Norway and were much durable. Sea food industry has brought China, Vietnam, Thailand, etc in the rank of those countries of the world whose economy was very stable and strong. She said only one lakh acre land of Punjab was being used out of total fish farming in the country these days for which diesel and electricity worth billion of rupees were used for water availability whereas cage fish farming utilizes natural water. The production yielded by 5 acre in fish farming can be obtained by two marla land in cage fish farming, she concluded.