Dr. Rolando R. Platon, chief of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) aquaculture department (AD) in Tigbauan, Iloilo, said that a P400 million grant of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) may later drive up the country into the development of genetically modified fish such as those being done in the United States.

At the onset, it will focus on hybrid technologies using conventional means of propagating fishes that make them bigger in nature and faster in multiplication.

The Advanced Aquaculture Technologies (AAT) includes an infection laboratory, a crustacean hatchery and nursery building, marine plants facility, and other facilities related to enhancing aquaculture production. Platon said the infection laboratory is important in disinfecting fishery from diseases which would require their isolation.

“This is important in producing disease-free (fishes),” he said.

The crustacean hatchery and nursery involves the most sophisticated facilities that have controlled atmosphere for formulating fish feeds and for experimental hatchery and breeding. While typhoons can destroy open ponds, the hatchery and nursery are sheltered areas where temperature can be controlled.

Wilfredo G. Yap, head of the technology verification and commercialization at SEAFDEC’s AD, said the marine plant facility holds better prospects for the development of the country’s marine culture where fishes may be raised in open sea areas and still be controlled by putting boundaries on the fish cages.

“In marine culture, we put (fish cages) in order like arranging them in blocks like subdivisions (rather than crowding these),” he said. This facility will also further develop research needs of the seaweeds industry which now offers one of the country’s most important agriculture exports.

AAT will likewise have laboratories for endocrinology which studies hormones to stimulate reproduction of fish species. Moreover, microbiology instruments enable diagnosis of diseases and identify bacterial strains in order to make fishes free from them. On nutrition, technologies will include ways of making food ingredients easily digestible by fishes so that efficiency occurs in enabling fishes to absorb all the nutrients from feeds rather than merely disposing off important nutrients.

Experts have proven that live or “moving” feeds that are neither plants nor animals are more efficient in growing fishes. The blue-green algae, for instance, has the substance astaxantin which is a precursor of Vitamin A that gives the pink color in salmon. This enhances the marketability of fish, and while the Philippines does not produce salmon, this feed enhancement may be applied on culturing local seafoods such as prawns inasmuch as bluefins in Japan are enhanced by such feeds, Platon said. The AAT’s nutrition laboratories will also correct nutritional deficiencies such as those that occur in blue shrimps.

“Nutrition of fish broodstock is one of the major factors affecting egg and larval quality; thus, practical diets for farmed fish species have to be developed to include dietary components that boost their reproductive performance,” Seafdec reported.

SEAFDEC, an agency formed between Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, Cambodia, and the Philippines, aimed since 1967 to promote aquaculture as this system of fishing is seen to occupy more than 50 percent of the Philippines’ fish production system with its healthier practices that sustain the environment.