Characteristics of some warm water marine fish with aquaculture potential

Factors limiting the development of commercial warm water marinefish farming are in four main categories: reproduction, nutrition, waterquality, and economics. During the last 5-10 years, much progress hasbeen made in the first and second. The third category includes mainlyengineering problems, and the fourth depends on supply and demandbalances. Several marine fish families have high aquaculture potential intropical and subtropical regions. Near the top of the list are: Centropomidae(snooks, sea bass/barramundi), Sciaenidae (drums), Serranidae(groupers, sea basses, coral trouts) and Sparidae (sea breams, porgies).Many species of economic importance in these families can easily bespawned and reared on a research scale. Feed conversion ratio with drypellets is often near 1.0 for 450 gram fish. Less than 12 months are requiredto produce 450 gram fish, which are gaining 3-5 grams per day and canthen be raised to 900 grams within 6 more months. We have reared at leastone species from each family from eggs through market size to maturity. Afew other families such as Coryphaenidae (dolphins also have goodpotential. This paper will discuss recent advances and biological factorsthat limit large-scale culture of representative species.