The Fisheries Research Institute on Friday said it had completed an experiment to artificially inseminate narrow-barred Spanish mackerels at sea, successfully reproducing fries.
The institute said it would continue to develop technology geared toward raising the mackerels and making the fish a flagship product for Taiwan.
The narrow-barred Spanish mackerel is a migratory species and has long been a favorite among Taiwanese.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
However, due to changes in the maritime environment, the total catch around Taiwan has dropped from 3,200 tonnes in 2001 to about 500 tonnes last year.
The increasing scarcity of the mackerels has driven the price to NT$1,300 per kilogram, the institute said, adding that the price tends to spike around Lunar New Year, reaching about NT$1,500 per kilogram.
Other countries, such as Japan and Saudi Arabia, have also considered developing the technology to artificially inseminate the narrow-barred Spanish mackerel.
However, the fish, which has proved to be aggressive and has no scales to protect it, often failed to live long enough after leaving the water, it said, making it very difficult to extract its gonads, the Littoral Marine Resource Research Center director Weng Chin-hsing (翁進興) said.
The institute, working with fishers in Penghu County, has captured the fish and obtained its gonads, he said.
The fry grew to 7 to 15cm within 45 days, the center said.
While artificial insemination was successful, the center found that the fries were extraordinarily aggressive and would attempt to eat other fries in the group it said, adding that the fish developed teeth as early as their fifth day.
With its larger pool, a Tainan facility had achieved a 0.2 percent survival rate for the fry, Weng said, adding that the center hoped to increase the survival rate to 50 to 70 percent.
Institute director Chang Chin-yi (張錦宜) said that it would trial a project to raise 10cm narrow-barred Spanish mackerel fry off Penghu County in an attempt to repopulate the species.
Chang added that net cages would be the ideal method of raising the fish.
The captain of the Peng Shan No. 100, Tsai Tsung-wei (蔡宗衛), who helped the institute with its experiments, said three generations of his family had been fishers in the Penghu area, adding that he remembered in his grandfather’s time, the narrow-barred Spanish mackerel population in the area had already decreased.
He is helping the institute in the hope of restoring the fish population in the area and allowing mackerel catches to make his vocation sustainable, he said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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