Claria – also known as African catfish – is a big, tasty, and above all resilient fish. It breeds abundantly and cheaply. But now that Cuba has decided to make claria a solution to its economic crisis, can it contain the catfish’s ecological threat?
Scientists outside Cuba say this is a big Catch 22.
“When you’re dealing with a food crisis, farming fish is a good solution,” says Martin Grosell, a fish and environment expert at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
“Does it come without any risks? No, it does not. The African catfish is controversial because in areas where it’s been released into the environment it has taken over quite readily and is competing with native species. And that’s a big concern.”
When you have a starving population, all options should be on the table. But we try and steer folks towards using native species. –John Stieglitz
Claria were introduced to Cuba 20 years ago during another, more severe economic crisis known as the Special Period. Since then, hurricanes are blamed for letting the fish escape its breeding tanks – and wreak ecological havoc on the island.
Cuba native Martin Arostegui discovered that six years ago on his first fishing trip back to the island since leaving as a youth.
“When I was a little boy in Cuba, I went fishing in the Ciénaga de Zapata for bass,” says Arostegui, a retired Miami doctor and sport fisherman, referring to a swampy area in western Cuba.
“And now there’s practically none because the claria have decimated all these fish.”
Claria, which often push other fish out of the way and eat their eggs, have reduced other native Cuban fish like gar and biajaca. Aróstegui says the claria’s size helps makes it such an eco-bully.
“Claria can grow up to 60 or 70 pounds or more,” he notes. “In Cuba, local fish in freshwater don’t get to be that big. So the claria will overpower everything.”
Credit Courtesy Martin Arostegui
Retired Miami doctor and sport fisherman Martin Arostegui with a claria he caught in Cuba in 2013.
By now most Cubans are aware of that. So the government produced a video game four years ago – called “Super Claria” – to improve fish’s image. It portrays the omnivorous catfish as an environmental superhero that eats up trash in lakes and rivers.
But U.S. scientists like John Stieglitz have a better idea: replace the super fish with a softer fish.
Stieglitz, a research professor at U Miami’s aquaculture facility in Virginia Key, is a Miami native, so he knows all about South Florida’s own troubled history with invasive species.
“We’ve had similar issues with lionfish,” he points out. And he says he understands why Cuba has made such a big claria bet.
“When you have a starving population, I think all options are on the table,” says Stieglitz. “You don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘Oh, that’s a good species for your environment or that’s a bad species.’ You’re looking for the most efficient production of animal protein, period.
“But we try and steer folks towards using native species.”
And Stieglitz believes there are plenty of those for Cuba to choose from that could the island the same pow for its peso. At the U Miami fishery he points to a tank full of sleek, dark cobia – a prolific ocean fish that’s native to Florida and Cuban waters.
Credit Tim Padgett / WLRN.org
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WLRN.org
John Stieglitz inspecting young cobia fish at the aquaculture facility of the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School in Virginia Key.
Stieglitz says he thinks the U.S. scientific community would be eager to help Cuba make a switch like that –much the same way recent U.S.-Cuba scientific exchanges have helped the two countries salvage threatened coral reefs in their common waters.
But for now, in Cuba, claria is king.
Source link : https://www.wlrn.org/show/latin-america-report/2019-06-03/cuba-hopes-a-catfish-will-solve-its-food-crisis-but-is-it-wrecking-the-islands-ecosystem
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Publish date : 2019-06-03 03:00:00
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