Culture of dorado Seriola lalandi in Recirculating Aquaculture Systems low cost in the North of Chile (Atena Editora)

Abstract

Chile is considered worldwide as an aquaculture country. However, around 79% of its annual production is linked to salmon farming (FAO, 2018). The Program for the Diversification of Chilean Aquaculture (PDACH) seeks to contribute to the aquaculture and commercialization of marine fish with high export potential. The PDACH identifies in Seriola lalandi a resource with aquaculture potential for the northern zone of Chile. Several investigations have been developed around the resource, however, there are still important challenges and gaps to address (ie technologies for fattening and their associated production costs). With the exception of Orellana el al. (2014), current knowledge, It has focused mainly on conditioning broodstock and obtaining larvae and juveniles with little development of technologies for the fattening phase. The purpose of this research was to obtain a transferable technological solution that would optimize culture parameters for fattening Seriola lalandi in low-cost recirculating aquaculture systems (SAR) whose associated production price was lower than the sale price (7.0 USD kg). The Pilot Fattening Unit (UPE) was designed and built with low-cost SAR technology. Two pilot crops were carried out between April 2014 and December 2016 (in total 960 days of cultivation) to evaluate the proposed system. The productive costs associated with the technology developed were 8.48 USD kg; However, the results obtained allowed us to make an economic projection whose production costs decreased to 5.28 USD kg based on the reduction of feed and juvenile items.