Norway helping Cuba getting into aquaculture
NIFES is a research institute with administrative duties, linked to the Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal affairs. The institute's research focus is nutrition: feed for fish - and fish as food. The institute gives scientific advice to the government and food authorities concerning health and safety aspects of seafood from both wild catch and farmed. The institute is independent of the fishery industry and the research results are published in international scientific peer reviewed journals and made available to the general public via our web pages.
A recent announcement explained the Cuban/Norwegian initiative;
NIFES is one of several institutions involved in the cooperation project, and will assist Cubans establishing a marine aquaculture industry. Freshwater-based aquaculture already exists in Cuba, but this is the first time that marine aquaculture will be tried out on a large scale. The aim is to create an economically and ecologically sustainable marine aquaculture industry in Cuba.
“Some components will have to be built from the ground, so this will be a long process, but the Cubans already possess good expertise, and everyone involved are working hard to get good results,” says Bjørn Tore Lunestad, who has just returned to Norway from a series of meetings with the Cuban Institute of Marine Research (CIP) in Havana.
Lunestad is a research scientist at NIFES and is coordinator of the development cooperation project. The first stages of the project will involve finding the most suitable species for aquaculture, obtaining fry and make the appropriate conditions for production, optimising fish feed and identifying suitable seawater sites for farms. An extra challenge in Cuba comes from the tropical storms that regularly assail the island. The project will also evaluate various means of processing and marketing the farmed fish, as well as general competence development, based on scientific meetings and Master and PhD training in fish health, feed development and aquaculture technology.
NIFES will primarily be involved in developing and optimising feeds for fry and farmed fish. The project will run for four years, and it has been given NOK 17 million(~€2.23 million) in funding by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD).
