DOHA: Qatar is setting up a QR230m ($63.16m) aquatic research centre as a first step to increase its fast-depleting surpluses of fish stocks.
The research centre, which will comprise massive fish and prawn hatcheries, is expected to be ready by 2015-end.
From these hatcheries at least eight tonnes of fingerlings will be released every year into the sea to help supplant the country’s harvestable surplus of fisheries.
Similarly, six tonnes of baby prawns will be released from these hatcheries into the Qatari waters each year to help check the depleting harvestable stocks of prawns.
The Minister of Environment, H E Ahmed Amer Mohamed Al Humaidi, laid the foundation stone for the Aquatic Research Centre in Ras Al Matbakh near Al Khor yesterday.
The proposed centre will be spread over an area of 110,000 square metres, the Minister said at the stone-laying ceremony.
He said that Qatar’s population had been increasing fast due to heavy influx of foreign workers for development projects and that was the reason why its harvestable fisheries stocks were depleting fast.
The Aquatic Research Centre is being set up with the objective of helping check that depletion and increase fish production in a way that Qatar’s marine environment is not affected and is rather protected and improved.
According to the Minister, the proposed research centre will also help protect other marine lives in the area like the sea turtle.
He said Qatar has the largest reserves of whale sharks in the world after Mexico and the largest reserves of Dugong in the world after Australia.
In the hatcheries of the research centre some 2.4 million fish eggs will be hatched into larva during four seasons in a year.
The larva will then be bred into two million fingerlings of two grammes each. They will then be bred into 1.5 million fingerlings of 10 grammes each.
Finally, a total of eight tonnes of fish fingerlings will be released into the sea from the hatcheries.
Similarly, prawns will also go through different stages of breeding and finally, six tons of baby prawns will be released into the sea every year from these hatcheries.
This will help optimise harvestable fish and prawn stocks in the Qatari sea.
The fingerlings will be of all species of fish that are popular in Qatar, including Hamour, Assafi, Assham and Assubaithi, among others.
Similarly, all types of prawns will be bred in the hatcheries for being released into the sea, said the Minister.
The Peninsula
