RADIO HABANA CUBA Hello, and welcome to Breakthrough, this station's weekly Science, Technology and the Environment update. I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro, RHC's science editor, and today I'll give you an update on how Cuba's fish farming efforts are going.
BREAKTHROUGH
Report on Science, Technology & the EnvironmentFor broadcast Sunday, September 23 & Thursday, September 27, 2001
Written and narrated by Arnaldo "Arnie" Coro, RHC's Science Editor
For more than thirty years now, Cuba has developed a national program for the efficient use of all available water reservoirs to grow fresh water fish. The very rugged and omnivorous Tilapia Africana is the most popular species among fish farmers here, but ciprinids, another well-known family of fresh water fish that adapts very well to our tropical climate, are also raised in the so-called extensive fish farming installations, in which man's intervention is limited to planting the small fish into the reservoirs and then fishing them with nets at the right time...
But this extensive, and certainly low-cost, method's productivity is not very high. That is why the Ministry of Fisheries Experimental Fish Farming Institute is developing and promoting the use of what is known as intensive fish farming, a method that increases production of high quality fish protein dramatically, while not costing too much to implement. Intensive fish farming also lends itself to the introduction of species that are more attractive to consumers, like the delicious catfish, and of course, the king of fish farming, that paradoxically is not a fish at all, YES -- I am talking about SHRIMPS....
Well, the fact is that the intensive fish farming methods are now providing the nation with a significant increase in fresh high-quality animal protein, at a lower cost than any other source of proteins... Besides that, intensive fish farming can be started even in relatively small tanks, something that has led to individual private farmers adding fish farming as an additional way of obtaining some extra income and also as a source of food for their families...
According to Cuban fish farming experts, the next step is to complete the experiments now in progress are seaside fish farms, in which so far salt water species are grown under carefully controlled conditions at two different locations of the Cuban coast with a lot of success, but that topic, amigos, is going to be the subject of an upcoming edition of Breakthrough...
And this was Breakthrough for today, how Cuba's effort to improve the protein content of its population's diet via fish farming is shifting the balance in favor of intensive fish farming in a very successful way. From Havana, I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro, RHC's Science Editor, now wishing you excellent reception of our next show. See you next week at the same time and short wave frequency!
Prepared 24-Sep-2001; transmitted 26-Sep-2001
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