Brine-shrimp, also known as Artemia or \u2018sea monkeys\u2019 are a key component of the food used in the commercial aquaculture of fish and prawns.<\/p>\n
Mr Moore said an expert team led by Department of Fisheries scientist Sagiv Kolkovski, had developed the technologically-advanced facility to cultivate the minute Artemia, in partnership with Cognis Australia, the world\u2019s biggest producer of the naturally occurring red pigment, beta-carotene.<\/p>\n
The farm is located at Cognis Australia\u2019s Hutt Lagoon, Port Gregory plant, where the company farms micro-algae from which beta-carotene is extracted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis new facility has potential to create a new multi-million dollar industry in rural WA and will help lead to more sustainable fish farming practices both domestically and internationally,\u201d Mr Moore said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe development of this project marks the culmination of seven years\u2019 research work, providing a much-needed source of high quality, sustainable fish-feed for Australian and international fish-farms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe project embodies the State Government\u2019s goal of promoting sustainable fishing and aquaculture practices and ensuring there are fish for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The development is a collaboration between the State Government, the aquaculture industry and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC).<\/p>\n
Commonly known as \u2018sea monkeys\u2019, Artemia feed on micro-algae and can be an unwanted pest in the production of beta-carotene.<\/p>\n
However, researchers have devised an Artemia-rearing system that can work effectively in tandem with Cognis\u2019 large-scale commercial micro-algae plant, turning a potential threat into an opportunity.<\/p>\n
Because it feeds on the highly nutritious algae, the Artemia produced will be of the highest-grade quality and contribute to the reduction of the reliance on imported Artemia supplies and other less sustainable fish feed sources, answering one of the main criticisms levelled at the industry.<\/p>\n
Artemia produced at the plant will also help fill the regular gaps in Artemia supply to Australia\u2019s commercial aquaculture industry as a result of market shortfalls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fisheries Minister Norman Moore embraced the aquaculture potential of Western Australia this week when he opened a cutting edge-design commercial brine-shrimp farm at Port Gregory, near Geraldton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-3214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3214"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=3214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}