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aquaculture — English
Farming with aquatic plants and animals. It does not include commercial fishing in open ocean waters. Aquaculture is the deliberate cultivation (breeding and feeding) of either salt or fresh water organisms, until they reach a desired size when they are sold (marketed). It includes a variety of fish, crustaceans (such as shrimps and prawns), molluscs (such as mussels and oysters) and plants such as edible waterlilies (known in South Africa as “waterblommetjies”), seaweed and other plants believed to have either medicinal or agricultural applications (such as fertilisers). It can be practised in artificial water bodies or in fenced-off portions of existing salt or fresh water bodies. Fresh water species are mostly farmed in artificial ponds such as on trout farms in the cooler regions of South Africa, for instance in Mpumalanga, and in Lesotho. Oysters, mussels, shrimps and prawns are mostly cultivated in portioned-off areas of shallow salt water bodies, like the oyster beds (rows of baskets) in the Knysna lagoon. Aquaculture is a very old industry. It dates from long before the Roman Empire and has been practised for hundreds or even thousands of years in China, India, Japan, South-East Asia, South America and Europe. The volume and value of aquaculture production has been steadily increasing since the 1950s, but it is doubtful that the industry will ever overtake commercial fishing as a food source. Breeding purely decorative koi fish and cultivating oysters to produce cultured pearls, are sometimes classified as aquaculture and sometimes not. Crayfish is not bred in aquaculture enterprises, simply because it has not yet been accomplished successfully and crayfish grows so slowly that its agricultural profitability is doubtful.
