Dear Editor,
The headline that stated “Govt. to roll out fish cage initiative at Mainstay/ Whyaka” caught my attention in a special way. It is about time that ‘cage culture’ becomes normalised in Guyana. I mean, the thing has huge advantages, even though pessimists can pinpoint a few setbacks, even though these are all basically set off by some form of mismanagement.
By way of informing, many types of water resources can be used, including lakes, reservoirs, ponds, strip pits, streams and rivers which could otherwise not be harvested. Also, a relatively low initial investment is required in any existing body of water, and it is a case of harvesting being simplified, while observation and sampling are easily done. I add that less manpower requirement is a plus, and more can take to this form of earning a living.
Where Guyana is concerned, President Irfaan Ali is confident that the Region Two Village on the Essequibo Coast, Mainstay/Whyaka, can be a trend-setter. He detailed that the project “could have a profitability of $10M per year.” And urgency in this is vital, as there is a shortage of fish and fish products both globally and regionally. “So what we want to do is to start the first pilot phase (fish cage project) in Mainstay,” he said.
Lest we opine that President Ali is a dreamer, I point out that, in many areas of the world, freshwater cage culture comprises a significant proportion of salmonid production. In Scotland, for example, 14% of the rainbow trout is reared in marine cages, 42% of the trout production comes from freshwater cages, and the remainder comes from freshwater ponds and tanks.
In Finland, about 85% of farmed rainbow trout comes from brackish-water cages, with the remainder coming from freshwater cages. In general, there has been a recent tendency in many countries to shift trout production from freshwater systems into marine cages. Guyana must hurry up.
A nice thing to take in is that the President is targeting the young people of the village with the project, and he has assured them that it will be owned by them. He explained that the marine cage that the Government is spending millions to set up at Mainstay would be a commercial one, with the aim of producing some 11 metric tons of fish every nine months. This is really big, and the people can expect input from the Government.
In this vein, Mr. Tejnarine Geer, Chief Fisheries Officer at the Ministry of Agriculture, and his technical team will be with the villagers, and according to the President, “…they will be working with you in establishing this project. There will be ongoing testing and looking at the best possible location.”
In fact, word from the Government team is that, “Once we do this right, based on the numbers we have established, the annual probability could be as much as $10M”.
What I like is that the Government went ahead and set aside some $200M for this project in this year’s budget. And even though many skeptics are still in ‘attack mode’ in terms of marine cage culture, we need to remind ourselves that we cannot sit still and expect to grow. We know that there are large-scale cage cultures going on in China and Thailand, so why not learn from them and make it the norm here? And that is precisely what is happening, as, according to Zulfikar Mustapha, the Minister of Agriculture, Guyana had actually asked China for advice and technical help in setting up the project in Guyana. So, even though “… the fish cage culture has proven to be successful in Asia; (and) it is fairly new in the southern part of the world, where Guyana is located”, only in this part of the world might the technology be new; for us, the Caribbean and South America, but we have to try it before to see how it ‘comes’ (to see if it can make money or not).”
I repeat: Guyana cannot sit and wait. Self-sufficiency is the aim, and overnight success is yet a reality.
Yours truly,
H. Singh
