Brunei fish farmers urged to obtain health certification for stock
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Floating-cage farmers should ask for a health certification from their supplier of fingerlings, or quarantine the fish fry for tests at the Department of Fisheries (DOF), under the Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources (MIPR), to ensure that the stoc
Dr Celia Lavilla-Pitogo, a speaker at the DOF Seminar on Biosecurity Procedures of Managers and Floating Cage Culture Operators, said among the main problems fishermen face in rearing fingerlings are biosecurity breaches from parasites and infections.
Due to the limited supply of fingerlings in the Sultanate, fishermen import their stock from Malaysia, China and the Philippines.
“Some of them enter Brunei without being thoroughly checked for diseases, so when they arrive here they already have some parasites associated with them,” said Dr Lavilla-Pitogo, an aquatic animal health specialist at the Integrated Aquaculture International.
While the parasites do not affect humans as long as the fish is cooked and cleaned properly, they could mean losses for fishermen who pay for the infected fry, which could in turn infect existing stock or die before they are harvested, she said.
“These small fish are a commodity that farmers pay for, so if they are buying them for harvest, they have to start as really healthy fish. We want to make sure that they are paying good money for good stock,” she said.
She said that fishermen are probably not aware of infections and diseases that the fry could be carrying, and that they likely order the fingerlings to ensure a continuous supply of fish in Brunei.
Noting that fishermen pay for fingerlings according to their size, Dr Lavilla-Pitogo said: “So if you have a commodity like that, you have to make sure that they survive in the cages.”
“That’s why we tell them to make sure that they have a certificate, or to put their fish in quarantine when they receive it and submit a sample to the lab for testing before putting them in the cages,” she said.
Once the fingerlings are put in the cages, the infected ones could spread the disease to the older fish, and it would be “really stressful to try to catch all of them again”, she said.
She also noted that Brunei’s waters are not free from these diseases, and that these infections and parasites can be found all around the world.
“The point is not to keep the disease away from Brunei, but to keep the disease away from the farm so that the farmer will profit from his activity,” she said.
