In the Red Sea region, attention is increasingly focused on support of food security through the development of additional resources, aligning with the principles of the blue economy. A key aspect of this endeavor involves enhancing farming practices, particularly through the adoption of intensive aquaculture food security augmentation. Almost by definition, agriculture in this arid region has to be based on the use of as little freshwater as possible due to extreme sacristy in rainfall at these latitudes. Hence, marine aquaculture or mariculture , offers an excellent solution as it is based exclusively on the use of seawater. At the same time, countries in the region suffer from a deficit of seafood production and face poor fishing conditions. Jordan for example has been importing almost all of its seafood consumption (about 97%). Lately however, concern has been raised regarding the effect of the fish cages on the Gulf of Aqaba/Red Sea coral reef ecosystem. Thus, development of alternative solutions such as Land-based mariculture has the potential to provide an economic efficient and environmentally friendly resource using the technology of recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS).
The strategy of mariculture in Jordan now is based on culture of economically valuable and environmentally non-demanding species and at the same time applies strict management controls for these practices. In environmentally sensitive areas such the Gulf of Aqaba/Red Sea known for its oligotrophic nature in support to coral reefs ecosystem, we attempted practices in land based aquaculture apart from natural water bodies following national regulations. Using RAS in Jordan’s aquaculture is specifically calibrated for endemic cultured fish species. This leads to the focus on high value low environmental burden aquaculture under RAS conditions. It allows implementing intensive culture fish species with minimal water consumption. Another approach is the culture of giant clams (Tridacnidae ) which exploits effective recycling of material between two trophic levels embodied within one organism, animal host with its algal symbionts (zooxanthellae) . This enables clams to tap different nutrient sources and achieve high growth rates in spite of low ambient concentrations. Recently attempts were undertaken to domesticate the local shovel Red Sea lobster (Scyllarides tridacnophaga ) using also a specially designed RAS. These practices of aquaculture will hopefully paves the road for the use of RAS in supporting sustainable marine aquaculture in Jordan’s Red Sea. At the same time , avoiding direct exploitation of the limited coast as well as the expanding in intensive land based rearing systems.