Farmed Fish Breathe New Life into Lake
16 June 2008RUSSIA - A Siberian lake that had been hit by overfishing has been rescued through fish farming.
It was thought Lake Chagatay in Siberia would never recover from the overfishing that almost stripped every living thing from its waters. But fish farming has come to the rescue, promising to return the lake to its former glory.
Last year 200 tonnes of the Northern Whitefish (Coregonus peled), part of the salmon family, which is on the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, were illegally poached in Lake Chagatay in the republic of Tuva.
This is 10 times the legal quota, according to teh Russian news agency Russia Today, and at the time it was thought the lake would never recover its decimated supplies.
However, the depleted stock is being replenished by thousands of fish larvae farmed at a plant hundreds of kilometres away.
The seeding by releasing teh fish larvae into the water requires great care, as changes in the lake’s current and temperature can be fatal to the embryonic fish.
The fish are transported more than 600 kilometres west from the Beloyarsk fish factory in the Altay region.
TheFishSite News Desk
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