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2. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

2.1 PROJECT LOCATION AND FACILITIES

The Fish Farming Centre is located some 60 km north of Jeddah with good asphalted roads and can be reached in 45 minutes by land transportation. The project is undergoing major construction of building facilities and presently has six prefabricated units utilized for office and housing of the technical staff and workers at the site. Three electric generator units are supplying power to existing prefabs and nursery acclimatization tanks of the project. Big fiberglass circular tanks and rectangular raceways to be installed are available at the project and are expected to be constructed before the start of the first stocking in summer of 1985. Four improvised concrete rectangular tanks are utilized for tilapia breeding to provide a ready source of fry/fingerlings for experimental tests in the existing water-based aquaculture facility - fish cages -(Lichatowich, et al., 1984).

Six units of semicommercial size (5 × 5 × 3 m deep) fish cages and 15 units of smaller size (2.5 × 2.5 × 3.0 m deep) nursery/experimental cages are presently used for culture experiments of tilapia and sigaids. Juvenile siganids are procured by catching fry along the shoreline lagoon of the Red Sea and stocked in the nursery cages, and are later grown to fingerling and marketable size in experimental cages. Two outboard motorized boats are used in water-based aquaculture operations which are also ideal for fishpen construction.

The personnel of the project consist of six technical staff (see list of persons met) complemented by nine labourers, housed in the project site.

Previously, the project produced their own feed in cake form, although more recently the same ingredients were transformed into pellet form through a local feed mill company. Improvised plastic feeding trays are used in feeding the fish in experimental cages. The project staff propose to use automatic feeding machines in all five aquaculture systems (cages, fishpens, lined ponds, circular tanks and rectangular raceways) soon.


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