Bader bin Mubarak, Fish Farm CEO, holds a salmon at his facility in Dubai last autumn. Courtesy photo/Global Aquaculture Advocate

A salmon farm in Dubai, because of course

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Thursday, April 02, 2020, 05:00 (GMT + 9)

Eyeing the sector as a key component of its food security system, the UAE is all-in on RAS

When you think of salmon farming, you probably picture net pens in icy cold waters surrounded by snowy hilltops, like in Norway or Chile, or the rugged coastal backdrops of British Columbia or Scotland’s Shetland Islands.

You might not imagine such activity in the Middle East, but salmon farms are also taking root here, like in the United Arab Emirates, where one company in Dubai is rearing the country’s first homegrown Atlantic salmon.

A worker feeds salmon at a recirculating aquaculture system facility in Dubai. Courtesy photo/ Global Aquaculture Advocate

Fish Farm LLC has spent the past seven years growing sea bream, sea bass, shrimp and yellowtail kingfish. Its focus on marine fish breeding and hatcheries is part of the UAE’s efforts to reduce its dependency on imported fish. Fish Farm began in 2013 with 80 sea cages along the Fujairah Coast containing sea bream and hamour, a local species of grouper. Another 20 hamour cages followed, along with a hatchery in Umm al-Quwain and a RAS facility in Dubai’s southern district of Jebel Ali.

Soon, Atlantic salmon farming became a reality and in 2019 Fish Farm sold the first batch of salmon that was born and bred in the UAE.

“Farming salmon was the strategic vision of HE Sheikh Hamdan, the Crown Prince of Dubai,” Edmund Broad, business development manager at Fish Farm, told the Advocate. “After a successful first attempt, experts were brought in from across the globe for further guidance. We also have a Food Security Initiative in that we work closely with the Future Food Security Minister in terms of aquaculture strategy.”

Fish Farm’s salmon is labeled as organic in UAE supermarkets like Spinneys. Other product forms, including smoked salmon, are in the pipeline. Courtesy photo/ Global Aquaculture Advocate

For the first salmon harvest, around 40,000 fingerlings (parr and smolts) were flown in from a hatchery in Loch Fyne, Scotland, using specialised transport tanks, according to Nigel Lewis, aquaculture and technical director at Fish Farm. This was followed by thousands more eggs from Iceland. After egg incubation, hatching and rearing in Fish Farm’s salmon hatchery, juveniles are moved to the recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility in Jebel Ali, where they start off in freshwater tanks in the nursery followed by large, seawater grow-out sections.

Fish Farm has 34 tanks, of which four are used for salmon rearing. The 16-meter-diameter tanks are 4.5 meters deep, while the freshwater system constitutes another eight tanks. The salmon are fully grown and ready for harvest in around 22 to 24 months. Six to eight hundred tons are produced each year.

Author: Bonnie Waycott/Global Aquaculture Advocate | Read the full article here

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