Tropentag, September 19 - 21, 2016 in Vienna, Austria "Solidarity in a competing world - fair use of resources"

Fish Production in Egypt: Current Status and Future Perspective

¹Agriculture College, Cairo University, Land Reclamation, Egypt
²National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (NIOF), Fish Population Dynamics, Egypt

Abstract

Fish are important as a human food source which can contribute to bridge the food gap of animal protein demand in Egypt. Fish contain as well a large proportion of animal protein, vitamins and minerals, a high proportion of essential amino acids necessary for the body. Despite the improved fish production in Egypt (≈1,500,000 ton in 2013: 25% from capture fisheries and 75% from cultured fish), the increasing pressure from growing populations and the desire to increase per capita consumption of fish requires to reorder priorities in order to achieve optimum exploitation of available fish resources. Egypt, as most of the world, needs to focus on fisheries as productive renewable food resources that can contribute to the development or increase national income as well as safeguard food production for coming generations. This will be achieved by the development of capture fisheries and the expansion of aquaculture production especially mariculture. Many problems are facing the development of our natural and artificial fisheries like overfishing, habitat degradation, climate change, illegal fishing practices, pollution, shortage of fresh water. The present work will evaluate the current status of our fishery resources and will discuss and analyse the challenges facing the development of fish production in Egypt (natural resources and aquaculture). The different impacts of these challenges will be illustrated, and finally the study will suggest some practical solutions to overcome these challenges and how to mitigate their negative impacts.

Keywords: Aquaculture, Egypt, fish production, food security, natural resources

Contact Address: Ahmed Mohammed, Agriculture College, Cairo University, Land Reclamation, 14 El-Nour City Faisal, 88888 Suez, Egypt, e-mail: ahmed.nabil2688yahoo.com