Aquaculture North America

‘Marine snow’ could be key component in eel farming

October 23, 2018
By Liza Mayer

In the latest push to perfect the technology to make eel farming commercially viable, Japanese scientists are looking at "marine snow" as potential diet for the slippery creature.

The so-called marine snow is the decaying sea detritus – comprised of dead plankton and other decaying organisms – found at the bottom of oceans.

If baby eels, or elvers, could survive on this diet harvested from the sea, that would be the next breakthrough in the efforts toward commercial production of fully farmed eels, says Prof Takashi Sakamoto of Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.

Japan is on a quest to make eel farming – from egg to maturity – commercially viable. The nation is the world’s largest consumer of the slippery fish but shortage of eel from the wild has caused a spike in prices.

Original report can be found here.

Eel

Print this page

Advertisement

Story continue below



Tags