Farming Barramundi
Introduction
Barramundi Lates calcarifer, occurs throughout the South-East Asian region, including northern Australia (Figure 1). In South-East Asia barramundi is known as Asian sea bass and a successful farming industry, particularly in Thailand, has been established for many years. In the wild, they can grow to 180 cm total length (up to 60 kg) but farmed fish are usually sold at plate size (500 g) or around 3 kg (for filleting).
Research into the culture of barramundi began in Australia in 1984 with studies carried out by the Queensland Government. The work was initially aimed at adapting culture techniques developed in Thailand to Australian conditions. Following the evident success of preliminary research, the first commercial barramundi hatchery and
farm was started in 1986 in Mourilyan Harbour, North Queensland (Schipp, 1996).
Barramundi are currently being farmed in Queensland, Northern Territory, South Australia, New South Wales and Western Australia. Queensland's barramundi industry has experienced the greatest expansion over recent years with commercial aquaculture production of plate-size fish growing from zero in 1986 to 349.4 tonnes (t) in 1996-97, worth $3.44 million (Lobegeiger et al., 1998). Estimated national production in 1995-96 was 529 tonnes, worth $5.83 million (Brown et al., 1997).
Geographic Distribution
Globally, barramundi are widely distributed in the Indo-West Pacific region from the Arabian Gulf to China, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea and northern Australia. In Australia they are distributed in tropical coastal and fresh waters from the Ashburton River in Western Australia to the Noosa River in Queensland (Schipp, 1996) (Figure 1).
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