Aquaculture

Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic organisms including fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants with some sort of intervention in the rearing process to enhance production, such as regular stocking, feeding or protection from predators. Farming also implies individual or corporate ownership of the stock being cultivated.

There are opportunities for employment in areas such as government, European policy, water quality monitoring, marine biology, disease monitoring, farming, feed companies (research, sales, marketing), environmental monitoring, aquaria, and fisheries.

Careers in aquaculture include aquaculture farmers, aquaculture technicians, and research technicians.

Aquaculture farmers...

are responsible for the maintenance of equipment and cages, transporting stock to new tanks, checking stock growth for harvesting, maintaining water quality, and managing the harvesting, grading and packaging of fish and other aquatic stock.

Aquaculture technicians...

are involved with breeding marine organisms, identifying and preventing common diseases, investigating nutrition, monitoring water quality, maintaining live cultures, recording breeding, and production and treatment programmes.

Research technicians...

will assist in aquaculture research projects. This may include collecting and harvesting, spawning, hatching, feeding and rearing fish and other aquatic organisms, maintaining an efficient operation of research aquaculture systems, and monitoring water quality and fish health.