by Mia Avril, Aquaculture Manager, Cape Eleuthera Institute, The Bahamas & Dean Avril, Climate Smart Agriculture Consultant, St Lucia
Tropical aquaculture is a rapidly growing sector in the Caribbean that is gaining momentum. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Global Fisheries and Aquaculture Reports, from 2022 to 2024, aquaculture in Latin America and the Caribbean rose from 3.3 percent of global production to eight percent. This growth, however, is being stymied by several factors, most significantly access to affordable high-quality feed. Recently we engaged with aquaculture farmers from Antigua, Saint Lucia, The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago, by means of a questionnaire, to better understand the status of aquafeeds in the region.
Challenges in sourcing aquafeeds
We engaged both full-time and part-time farmers. Tilapia was identified as the predominant species reared in aquaculture systems, followed by prawns, crayfish and ornamental fish. Most farmers reported that it was challenging to source aquafeeds, with high cost being cited as the most influential factor affecting access to feed. Most of the feed procured was sourced from imports distributed by local suppliers with prices ranging as high as US$75 to US$95 for 50lb of feed. In some instances, tax regulations for the territory further increased the cost of the feeds. Most farmers indicated an interest in utilising local sources of aquafeeds provided they are available.
A variety of local ingredients have been identified as suitable for processing feeds such as coconut by-products, fisheries by-products, aquatic plants and other terrestrial herbs, and materials derived from native trees. While some farmers were satisfied with the feed resources that are currently available on the market, most of them experience disruptions in supply. As a result, several farmers rely on alternative, often inferior, sources of feed to address these disruptions – such as chicken feeds. All the farmers that we engaged with agreed that the availability of aquafeeds is significantly lacking in the region.
Potential solutions
Some suggestions towards improving quality and availability of feeds include local manufacture, bulk order and supply by governments to mitigate high cost of imported feeds, subsidies on equipment to encourage local processing of aquafeeds, and increased utilisation of local raw materials to produce local aquafeeds. Given these current constraints, there is great potential for the development of aquaculture in the Caribbean if consistent access to high-quality and cost-effective aquafeed can be achieved.
The issues of high feed costs, unreliable supply and poor quality of feed mirror the sentiments of aquaculturists throughout the region. There is also a lack of variety in feed types available to support different aquaculture operations (pond vs tank culture) and species (finfish vs shellfish). Such constraints pose a major hindrance to productivity, profitability and overall growth potential for many farmers, especially those with medium to large-scale commercial operations who rely heavily on an intensive feeding regime. This underscores the need for local solutions to aquafeed production, to enhance food security, resilience and the overall sustainability of the aquaculture sector in the Caribbean region.
Local research initiatives
A research team led by Mia Avril at the Cape Eleuthera Institute in The Bahamas has embarked on a mission to explore the potential for producing local aquafeeds. The primary objective of this research is to adequately substitute the typical commercial aquafeed ingredients with unconventional, locally sourced inputs without compromising the quality of the feed product.
The rationale for this endeavour is based on the understanding that several Caribbean islands are equipped with feed mills capable of producing aquaculture feeds; however, none of the common aquafeed inputs are produced in any of the islands. Therefore, if suitable local substitutes can be identified, this would increase the capacity of the region to support the sector independently and reduce the reliance on costly and sometimes unreliable imports.
In a further effort to reduce the cost of the aquafeeds, most of the ingredients are waste stream-derived by-products from other food production sectors. These include discards from artisanal fisheries, spent grain from local breweries, food waste from kitchens which are used to cultivate insect larvae such as black soldier fly, and agricultural by-products such as root crops that are not up to market standard. All of the inputs investigated have been used as single ingredient substitutes in aquafeeds for various species, where other commercially used ingredients remain the same. The research at the Cape Eleuthera Institute seeks to formulate nutritionally complete diets utilising only locally sourced inputs.
Preliminary trials & future research
Preliminary feed trials have been conducted on both juvenile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) and juvenile Caribbean spiny lobster (Panulirus argus). The formulations used met the dietary protein requirements of each species (40 percent for tilapia and 60 percent for spiny lobsters) and both showed promising results. A six-week feed trial was conducted comparing condition factor (K), specific growth rate (SGR), feed conversion ratio (FCR), hepatosomatic index (HSI) and relative ventricular mass (RVM) of juvenile tilapia being fed the homemade feed, using a typical commercial feed as a control.
The results showed that all these parameters were within the typical range for juvenile tilapia both from literature, as well as the control group, and that there was no significant difference in the assessed health and growth parameters of fish between the two diets.
The lobster diets also yielded positive results. A ten-week feed trial was conducted using juvenile lobsters comparing growth under three dietary regimes: live marine snails, fish discards combined with gelatin, and homemade pellets. The parameters measured were carapace length, moult frequency and pigmentation. The results from this trial suggested that while live snails produced the highest growth rates and pigmentation, the homemade pellets supported healthy growth rates and moulting frequency in juvenile spiny lobsters.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, as research into more refined formulations is planned. Other factors being considered in the ongoing research include shelf-life stability of feeds, reduction of processing costs and incorporation of other local ingredients such as marine algae extracts. Further investigation into the impacts of these diets on the health of the organisms and growth at different life stages is also underway.
Published in the February 2025 issue of International Aquafeed.
