As other North Africa – Middle East countries, Israel desert is covering more than half of its land, therefore lacking freshwater, but has an excess to two marine environments: the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The removal of cage fish farms from the north tip of the Red Sea a dozen years ago, reduced significantly mariculture production in Israel and forced the sector to cope with two challenging development opportunities: 1. Arid inland based aquaculture and mariculture using pumped Red Sea water, 2. Offshore based mariculture in the Mediterranean Sea.
Following a 100 ton/year pilot of sea bream (Sparus aurata) in RAS and the development of effluent nitrogen removal through bacterial and algal procedures, we promote a large scale program for land based mariculture parks in the Arava\Araba valley. An innovative denitrification process in anoxic reactors is planned to provide a central water treatment plant for the parks users. Macro algae rearing units was tested and now is scaled up to remove nitrogen fluxes from other seawater users (such as desalination plant) to reduce efficiently the total nitrogen loads to the Red Sea.
Few brackish water ornamental fish farm and a large scale indoor RAS in arid areas are irrigating olive plantations or growing lattes in an aquaphonic setup. In these areas and others, high sun radiation is captured by solar panels installed over roofs or open ponds water surface, increasing income and improving water quality parameters.
On the East Mediterranean front, the Israeli coast is exposed to rough oceanographic conditions reaching to 7-8m significant wave heights. After more than 20 years of trails two submersibles cage technologies are operational in farms of 200-700 ton/year scale, proving technical feasibility that reflects the need for scale up to 1,000-5,000 ton/year farms. Governmental maritime spatial planning allocated polygons and now putting emphasis on solutions for operational piers.
Commercial and governmental efforts are also promoting completion domestication of mullet (Mugil cephalus), grouper (Epinephelus aeneus) and recently Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, aiming to further expand Israel’s capacity as marine fingerlings supplier to neighboring countries and offering species to be grown in offshore cages. The National Center for Mariculture (NCM) research institute is leading the tuna domestication project.
An additional important sector is micro and macro algae culture of several species that is carried out mainly by commercial companies, supported by several research institutes. The major production of algae’s is taking place in southern Israeli desert, utilizing biotechnological innovations to acquire high value extracted materials. Recent initiatives are also looking at large scale macro algae culture in the open sea in relation to mitigate climatic change.