Tilapia Hatchery

Today we went on field trips to visit and help out at local NGOs. I went to a fish hatchery, where they raise tiny fish to stock farmers ponds. It was quite the sanuk (fun) hands on experience. The farm has about thirty employees, and is run my a crisitan missionary from minesota with a degree in aquaculture. He was very interesting and fun. I enjoyed hearing about the applied science of the hatchery like how they use tiny doses of testosterone in the feed of the young fish so that all the fish they raise to sell will be male. This helps out the farmers because they don’t have to deal with the fish in their pond breeding (which might sound good at first) only it means the little babies compete with the adults for resources and the farmer will end up with lots of fish of all different sizes and fewer “top dollar” plate sized tilapia when they harvest. Since the carrying capacity of the pond dosnt change all of the babies take away from the volume of sellable-fish that can be supported.

The fish they primarly farmed was Tilapia. It is not native to Thailand, but it is not too bad as an invasive species because it feed off algae and aquatic plants, and is not a predator. (it is now common all over Thailand). It is a great fish for eating, and grows to full size in about half a year! After males fertilize the females eggs, the females carry their brood of eggs around in their mouth!

The farm was made of about a dozen or more, square ponds, with blue net pens holding sometimes up to 30,000 fish. We saw where they raise the tiny fish from eggs they harvest from the breeder adults. They sort the babies into batches that will all be of even size, and sell those batches out to locals who have their own raising ponds. In these ponds, the riase the fish from tiny specks to “fingerlings” and sell the “fingerlings” back to the hatchery, and the hatchery sells them to people who raise them in river baskets, or farm ponds.

We got to help harvest eggs from the adult tilapia. We waded out into the pond, fighting a continual battle of shoe tug-of-war with the deep muck, and took up positions at the corner of one of the pens. The net was pulled across the pen so that all the fish were together in one corner. Then we dipped in with scooping nets and grabbed hold of the trashing fish and checked to see if they had eggs in their mouths. This, while it sounds simple, was truly a feat of speed, and will power. They lept, thrashed, slipped, squirmed, jumped, and generally made slippery havoc. By the end we were bold grabbers, soaked and poked. It was unbelievably fun. Sometimes they had snails, or smaller fish in their mouths. Only a few of the fish had eggs, but when they did the eggs slipped out like orange b-bs.

They raised a pair of farmed-wild-boars in a hut on the edge of the property. We had snake fish for lunch, the meat was so soft and tasty.