World Aquaculture 27 zation to build national self-sufficiency in hatchery capacity, • Promotion of aquaculture as a means for rural poverty alleviation, • Development of bivalve mollusc culture and other maricultural projects in the Black Sea, • Development of monitoring protocols to assure aquaculture’s environmental, economic and social sustainability, • Focus on developing aquaculture of native species and developing codes of good husbandry practice and • Establishment of a cost-effective fish health monitoring system (Van Anrooy et al. 2006). Beginning in 2006, steps were taken to act on a number of the points in the master plan. First among these is development of aquaculture based on native species. As previously noted, culture of trout in Georgia has predominantly focused on introduced rainbow trout, which has been popular in Tbilisi markets. As a result of some marketing pressure resulting from the plan, a number of farms including the trout farm at Zvare, in the Keda region and Ajaria in southwestern Georgia (Figure 1), have begun culturing native European brown trout (Salmo trutta) occasionally known as the Black Sea salmon in its anadromous form, (Nikandrov and Shindavina, 2007), supplemental to their culture of rainbow trout. Trout culture in Georgia remains somewhat primitive, relying on relatively low stocking densities in flow-through concrete raceway or tank systems (Figure 2). Most of the trout eggs, fry or fingerlings are obtained from hatcheries within Georgia, but there is some importation, mostly from Turkey. In general, the quality of the fish stocked is rather poor and survival rates are often low, frequently 30 percent or less. Many trout farmers either formulate their own feed from local grain products and fishmeal frequently imported from Turkey and elsewhere and there is considerable reliance on formulated pelleted feed manufactured in Turkey. The most progressive trout farmers use formulated pelleted feeds from Italian or Danish manufacturers that have better essential amino acid profiles and better storage life because of antioxidant and anti-fungal additives. Farmers are finding considerable improvement in feed conversion with the western European diets, but import cost is a considerable concern. A second major area in the 2005 Georgian master plan for aquaculture development is the development and use of economically viable culture systems for bivalve molluscs in the Black Sea. In late 2005, the Iberian Pontomarine Aquaculture Company (www.ipa.ge) selected a mussel farm site approximately 2 km offshore from the village of Gonio, about 10 km north of the Turkish border. The site is in clean water south of the discharge plume of the nearby Chorokhi River that drains a watershed area of about 12,000 km2 in northern Turkey and southwestern Georgia. Predominant currents in the Black Sea carry the silt-laden discharge plume northward away from the farm. It should be noted that since its establishment, the Gonio mussel farm provides part-time employment for a half dozen traditional capture fishermen from Gonio that have been underemployed because of fisheries restrictions imposed in the last few years aimed at Fig. 2. Typical concrete single-pass trout rearing tanks in the Lesser Caucasus mountain region of Southern Georgia. Photo by Michael A. Rice. Fig. 3. Concrete mooring block for longlines (approximately 10m3 or 23 t) destined for deployment at the IPA mussel farm at Gonio being loaded at the port of Batumi. Photo by Enrico Beridze.
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