Wild fish stocks are being rapidly depleted, and mariculture – cultivating marine organisms in a controlled environment – can provide an alternative source of seafood. Worldwide mariculture fish production is rapidly growing, and developing mariculture is one of Croatia's strategic goals. Achieving this goal requires minimizing production costs and environmental impacts of mariculture.

The aim of the UKF project FiMDEB was to create a model relating feeding to fish growth, and use it to investigate how common feeding scenarios could be improved. The model was to be based on Dynamic Energy Budget theory of metabolic organization, which describes how organisms acquire and partition energy. Since fish feed constitutes  approximately 50% of operational costs of mariculture, any savings in fish feed can lead to substantial savings in production costs.

PUBLICATIONS:

A Full Lifecycle Bioenergetic Model for Bluefin Tuna

A new theoretical framework is proposed for devising feeding strategies in aquaculture, and a complete lifecycle model aimed at understanding metabolism of one of the most lucrative aquaculture species – pacific bluefin tuna (PBT) . Application of the new tools to sea bream aquaculture suggested significant improvements if feeding for smaller fish were increased. High maintenance requirements, most likely fueled by high energy expenditure on movement – were identified as the main reason for extremely inefficient aquaculture production of PBT (Jusup et al. 2011).

Jusup, M., Klanjšček, T., Matsuda, H., and Kooijman, S.A.L.M. 2011. A Full Lifecycle Bioenergetic Model for Bluefin Tuna.PLoSONE 6(7): e21903. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0021903.

Influence of fish feed composition on oxygen utilization of aquaculture effluents:

The decomposition of theorganic matter, in the form of excess feed and excreted matter, introduced to the environment by aquaculture can endanger living organisms by lowering oxygen levels. We developed linear and non-linear models to represent the dynamics of decomposition and accumulation of the organic matter, oxygen utilization and ammonium production. The model results are compared to the datasets from simulated aquaculture pond experiment (Klanjšček et al,2011)

Klanjšček, Jasminka; Geček, Sunčana; Legović, Tarzan. Influence of fish feed composition on oxygen utilization during decomposition of aquaculture effluents // Aquaculture Research. (2011) DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2109.2011.02994.x