AQUACULTURE IN EGYPT: JUST A VISION OF DEVELOPMENT

Aquaculture is the aquatic counterpart of agriculture. Linguist'. cagy, it is derived from the Latin word 'aqua' which means water, and 'culture' which means to cultivate, or to till. Aquaculture is the hus‌bandry of fish or Other water-based species in a controlled environment (Molnar at at, 19876 Historically. aquaculture was started in China about 500 BC and was practiced by the ancient Egyptians thousands of years ago. The ancient Egyptians depicted precisely its practices and drew different used fish species on the walls of their temples. The world supply of fish comes from captive fisheries and aqua. culture. Fillay (1990) argued that about 100 to 140 million metric tens of edible fish products will be urgently required to meet the demands of the world population by the year 2000. There is a deficit of approximate‌ly 20 to 60 million metric tons to be made up. The only known means to solve this problem is an accelerated development of aquaculture. Aquaculture in Egypt represents about 47% of the whole Egyp. lien fish production amounted 724.407 metric tons (General Authority for Fish Resources Development, 2001:8). There is still a good opportu‌nity to increase the Egyptian aquaculture production and challenge the future population demands. The Egyptian fish cage aquaculture may play an effective role in this concern. The Egyptian private aquaculture sector produces about 42% of the total Egyptian aquaculture produc‌tion. The main objectives of this study were: (1) to show aquaculture situation in the world; (2) to show aquaculture devetopmeM in Egypt; and (3) to raise some visions and suggestions. for policy-makers in order to develop the Egyptian aquaculture industry.