A love affair with seafood? Aquaculture industry needs to grow if that’s to last

When you next tuck into your dish of fish-head curry, here’s something to chew over as you bite into its star ingredient, red snapper. This fish is playing a key role in growing Singapore’s aquaculture, which is important for making us less dependent on imported food.

Given Singapore’s urban landscape, this is a tough call. But aquaculture, where fish, shellfish and aquatic plants are bred and cultivated in water “farms”, offers one way forward.

Most of Singapore’s food is imported, but in recent years, aquaculture has emerged as a promising solution in enhancing the nation’s food resilience to achieve the “30 by 30” food security goal. This aims to build up the local agri-food industry to sustainably produce 30 per cent of Singapore’s nutritional needs by 2030. This also features in the Singapore Green Plan 2030 and will help build a more resilient food future.

Currently, only 7.6 per cent of the nation’s seafood consumption is produced locally. More can be done to grow this figure through research, fish farming technologies and getting local academia and fish farms involved.

The results from an ongoing research and development (R&D) project to optimise the production of red snapper off Singapore’s shores might offer some solutions. However, this project also brings to the surface the challenges of developing Singapore’s aquaculture industry. 

Diving into the snapper project

First, the backdrop: The local farming community – both land and water-based – faces several challenges, with the most obvious being space. As at 2022, Singapore had 27 land-based and more than 100 sea-based farms, the vast majority being traditional kelongs, spread along the Strait of Johor. As no current sea farm licences are being issued, new players in the aquaculture sector must take over an existing kelong. 

The project to grow red snapper – a popular and high-value local marine fish – involved the Republic Polytechnic (RP), Tropical Futures Institute-James Cook University Singapore, Singapore Food Agency (SFA) and several local fish farms including The Fish Farmer, Singapore Aquaculture Technologies, Aquaculture Centre of Excellence and Blue Ocean Harvest.

When it began, the exact species of snapper being farmed in Singapore was unknown. Red snapper genetic barcodes belonging to fish from sources such as local farms, Jurong Fishery Port, supermarkets and wet markets were compared against the known barcodes of red snappers to conclusively identify Malabar red snapper as the Singaporean red snapper.

This was interesting, considering that farms here believed its sister species, the crimson red snapper, was being farmed.

As one of the R&D projects under SFA’s $23 million grant funding to support sustainable urban food production, we procured thousands of fish fingerlings from diverse locations and reared them at local farms. This was a formidable task, considering that it took more than six months to identify a local breeder as well as regional importers of red snapper fingerlings. This was aggravated by Covid-19 supply chain disruptions, including flight cancellations and lockdowns.

It is worth noting that the sole identified local supplier has since closed, highlighting the challenges faced by Singaporean breeders to run their own breeding facility. This is not surprising, considering the base cost of setting up such a facility is close to $1 million and there is a daily recurring operation cost. Add in technical and operational complexities, and the challenge becomes higher.

So it is useful to learn from overseas counterparts with well-established aquaculture programmes and apply it to Singapore. One key reason for the successful aquaculture scene in Australia is the heavy government support and investment in hatcheries.

Singapore could follow this example by investing in its own broodstock and hatcheries. Currently, SFA’s Marine Aquaculture Centre (MAC) on St John’s Island already has an existing broodstock facility for Asian sea bass. 

To better support the local industry, a genetic “toolkit” for the Singaporean red snapper is being developed. This would allow researchers and farmers to better select aquaculture traits such as faster growth. Integrating these genotypes within a centralised broodstock facility such as the MAC would ensure a constant supply of high-quality red snapper fingerlings to local farms. These can also be exported to neighbouring countries.

It might also be worth exploring setting up similar broodstock and hatcheries in neighbouring countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Local farms can focus on optimising their farming space and processes while benefiting from a stable and reliable supply of fish fry.

Hand in hand with a centralised broodstock facility, a cost-effective genotyping product is needed to allow for selection of commercially relevant aquaculture traits. This would ensure a supply of high performing broodstock as well as superior quality fingerlings.

Together with Asian sea bass and red snapper, it would be useful to look for species that are popular with locals and that display good aquaculture traits such as faster growth and disease tolerance as well as fillet quality and yield.

A lesson from when the snapper died

Another persistent challenge in sea-based aquaculture is nutrient pollution caused by uneaten fish feed and from fish waste, which is mainly excrement as well as dead matter such as scales and pieces of flesh. This is compounded in Singapore due to polluted waters in the Strait of Johor.

At least one huge mass mortality involving 12,000 red snapper in our project could not be linked to any known pathogen. It could be due to an unknown disease, since we currently have limited knowledge of red snapper, or it could be triggered due to a drop in water quality caused by pollutants. 

One solution to reduce fish mortality rates could be seaweed – a natural filter which can also absorb nitrates and phosphorus released due to aquaculture. Cultivating seaweed in Singapore waters could also offer a natural solution to address pollution and drive more sustainable practices.

It also offers prospects for value-added products beyond nutrient absorption, such as pigments as natural colouring, nutritional supplements, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, as well as sustainable packaging material.

Sharing the marine environment

Then there is the marine environment itself, especially with Singapore’s plans to expand the aquaculture space. We should adopt sustainable practices to ensure marine biodiversity and the aquaculture sector can co-exist. The industry could also explore using solar panels on farms or better safeguards to prevent farmed fish from escaping into the natural ecosystem.

We can cultivate a thriving and responsible aquaculture sector that contributes significantly to the nation’s food security while preserving the beauty and biodiversity of its surrounding waters. However, we must strike a balance between adopting sustainable aquaculture practices and incorporating technological advancements. SFA’s recent announcement to delay the setting up of fish farms at two sites due to concerns over damaging pristine coral reefs is a good example of close industry consultation and striking a balance.

Centralising services should extend beyond hatchery and water management to include cost-effective and accessible services for disease diagnostics, health management, sustainable aquatic food and technology adoption, as well as sharing knowledge. SFA’s recently launched Aquatic Animal Health Services now provides easy access to manage disease and is a step in the right direction. 

Manpower is another problem

Lack of skilled manpower remains a constant challenge. More can be done through concerted efforts between government, educational institutes and the industry.

RP’s diploma in environmental and marine science is the only local diploma with aquaculture offered as a specialisation track. Training opportunities are further provided by research grants, such as the red snapper project itself, which has trained more than 30 students.

Farms must also embrace innovative hi-tech solutions to improve efficiency. This includes use of solar panels to lower energy costs and auto-feeders to reduce reliance on skilled manpower. Adoption of automation, robotics, sensor technology, artificial intelligence and video analytics to observe fish behaviour and feeding, as well as water quality monitoring, would further help farmers increase aquaculture productivity.

Another way of supporting fish farmers is to identify the fish that customers actually want to eat. A good example is seen at Yu Zhong Bu Tong restaurant at Food Republic, Wisma Atria. By serving Asian sea bass and giant grouper reared on our shores, the restaurant offers firm yet flaky fish alive just an hour before being served. 

In this way, fish farmers realise their dream of “kelong to table” while ensuring the freshest produce is served.

There is still room for growth in our aquaculture industry. Guided by the “30 by 30” goal and local ingenuity, more kelong to table concepts could soon be swimming our way.