Cultivo de dorado Seriola lalandi en Sistemas Acuícolas de Recirculación de bajo costo en el Norte de Chile

Chile is considered a global aquaculture country. However, 95% of its annual production is linked to salmon farming. The Program for the Diversification of Chilean Aquaculture (PDACH) seeks to contribute to the aquaculture and commercialization of marine fish of high export potential. The PDACH identifies in yellowtail Kingfish (Seriola lalandi) a resource with aquaculture potential for the northern zone of Chile. Various research has been developed around the resource; however, important challenges and gaps still remain to be addressed (i.e., fattening technologies and their associated production costs). With the exception of some authors, the current knowledge has focused mainly on the conditioning of breeding and obtaining of larvae and juveniles with little development of technologies for fattening phase. The purpose of this research was to obtain a transferable technology solution that optimizes crop parameters for the fattening of Seriola lalandi in low cost recirculation aquaculture system (RAS) whose associated production price will be lower than the selling price (7 USD kg). Pilot Unit of Fattening (PUF) was designed and built with low-cost RAS. Two pilot assays were conducted between April 2014 and December 2016 (in total, 960 cultivation days) to evaluate the proposed RAS. The productive costs associated with the technology developed were 8.48 USD kg. However, analysis allowed to realize an economic projection whose costs of production decreased to 5.28 USD kg based on the reduction of the feeding and juvenile items.