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Penghu university team raises cuttlefish in tanks

National Penghu University has successfully cultivated cuttlefish in a fully controlled environment -- an achievement that could help stop cuttlefish dwindling in the wild.

"The birth of the cuttlefish in an artificially controlled environment is the first program of its kind in Taiwan," Wong Chin-ping (翁進坪), a researcher at the university, said on Thursday.

Wong said the research team successfully cultivated 1,500 cuttlefish last spring from 2,000 eggs collected in the wild. One hundred of those were raised in a tank at a laboratory and were fed shrimp.

The cuttlefish grew rapidly to weigh 500g to 800g at nine months old, Wong said. They later laid eggs, producing around 1,000 cuttlefish of 1cm to 3cm in size. Around 500 of them died before reaching maturity.

The project's aim is to enable Taiwan to mass produce cuttlefish, a popular seafood, for consumption. Cuttlefish are usually made into balls, stir fried or added to soup.

However, in recent years, the number of cuttlefish in the wild has dropped sharply. Only a few research teams have been trying to raise them in tanks.

The project is being billed as a great milestone for stimulating the regeneration of cuttlefish stocks and developing marine and aquaculture industries, Wong said.

The mollusc used in the project is the pharaoh cuttlefish. Its normal life expectancy is about one year and it lays approximately 300 to 500 eggs only once in its lifetime, Wong said.

Under "full cultivation" conditions, the survival rate of the cuttlefish species in the project has been 80 percent so far, a rate that is far higher than in the wild, said Hsue Yung-lin (薛雍霖), a university student participating in the program.

Hsue said that the cuttlefish grew more quickly in captivity because of the feed provided to them.
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