Groupers are warm-water fish inhabiting tropical and subtropical seas, especially around coral reefs. There are about 400 different types of groupers worldwide, among which more than 30 kinds can be found in waters surrounding Taiwan. The fish has to be raised in seawater with an optimum temperature range between 22 and 28 degrees Celsius. When the temperature drops below 15 degrees, the fish stop eating and die.
Groupers are protogynous hermaphrodites, meaning that all groupers begin their early life cycle as females. Some of them as they age are triggered by internal and external factors to become males. This means that females outnumber the males, and the scarcity of male adult groupers had as a result always been a major obstacle limiting the expansion of grouper aquaculture—until Taiwan developed artificial transsexual and breeding techniques in the early 2000s.
“The breakthroughs have given Taiwan a distinctive edge in the industry,” said Dai Kun-tsai, chairman of Long Diann Bio Technology Co. Ltd., Taiwan’s largest grouper aquaculture operator. “In fact, I believe that grouper farming is the only sector in aquaculture where Taiwan can comfortably enjoy an edge in the foreseeable future,” he proudly added.
The country began raising the fish in 1975 on the outlying Penghu Islands. Currently, most of the local fish farms are located in Tainan County, Tainan City, Kaohsiung County and Pingtung County, all in southern Taiwan, as well as on the Penghu Islands. In 2007, a total of 89 grouper farmers employed 1,554.31 hectares of land to raise the species and produced 17,234 tons valued at NT$3.88 billion (US$117.68 million). Their major rivals come from mainland China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
After developing the industry for three decades, Taiwan has been recognized as the global leader in the business. “It is in Taiwan that grouper aquaculture is at its most advanced with a total of five species being raised,” stated an article published online in July 2007 in Volume 18, Issue 3 of “Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems,” an international journal dedicated to freshwater and marine habitats.
That number has since increased to six kinds, namely the Malabar grouper, the orange-spotted grouper, the brown-marbled grouper, the potato grouper, the leopard coral grouper and the giant grouper, according to Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Hu Sing-hwa. “This is a great achievement, because there are only seven breeds of groupers that can be artificially raised,” he stressed.
The country also tops the world in terms of production value. According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, aqua farmers around the world bred some 70,000 tons of groupers in 2007. While Taiwan made up 24.6 percent of this total, its output value accounted for 58 percent of the global yield of US$205 million. “This is due to better product quality and the fact that the majority of Taiwan’s exports are live fish, which tend to have higher unit prices,” Hu reasoned.
Other than their advanced aqua farming techniques, Taiwan’s grouper growers have several distinctive advantages over their rivals, Hu told “Taiwan Today” during an interview July 8. Because of the island’s temperate climate, local farmers can continue raising the fish through wintertime. Aquaculture operators on the mainland, especially those in Fujian and Guangdong Provinces, do not have this privilege, and as a result, the groupers they raise are generally smaller in size and sold at lower prices, he explained.
The proximity of the island to its major markets, namely Hong Kong, the mainland’s coastal cities and Japan, also places Taiwan in an excellent position over its competitors down south, Hu added. For example, it takes only 36 hours for local growers to ship live groupers to Hong Kong via sea, three to eight days shorter than the time it takes their rivals in Southeast Asia to reach the same destination. The large stock of male breeding fish kept by local farmers also enables them to secure a steady supply of larvae and to continue expanding their business, Hu added.
Starting this July, aqua farmers can start transporting livestock to mainland China via 17 dedicated ships that have been granted special permits. “This change will greatly increase local grouper growers’ competitiveness,” said Dai.
As worldwide catches of the fish keep falling while global demand continues to rise, “this market will be worth tens of billions of New Taiwan dollars a year,” Dai pointed out. Inspired by the tremendous opportunities of the fish, the country’s public and private sectors are now eyeing the farming of giant groupers, the finest kind of the species that guarantee even more profits in the future.
With a delicate flesh rich in protein content and collagen, giant groupers (Epinephelus lanceolatus) are the largest and rarest kind of the species with the highest production value, according to both Hu and Dai. Consumers in the past had to rely on stock caught in the wild, and supply was often in such shortage that food gourmets in Hong Kong, the major buyers of the fish, had to make reservations well ahead of time and wait for a call from restaurants to be able to enjoy the fish, Dai said. The Japanese also regard the species as highly nutritious food that can enhance energy.
Working with the Eastern Marine Biology Research Center of the COA’s Fisheries Research Institute, Long Diann led the world in successfully developing hatchery techniques of giant groupers in 1995, and began raising the species on a large scale two years later. While the Malaysians can also farm giant groupers, Taiwan still has the upper hand with the key breeding know-how.
Cheng Ann-chang, an assistant professor of Department of Aquaculture at National Kaohsiung Marine University, attributed this achievement to the close collaboration among the government, research institutes and aquaculture operators, a complete industry chain that provides strong support to local fish growers, and the pioneering approach of applying professional division of labor to the business.
Depending on what stage of maturity they have reached, the giant groupers are separated into four different groups: seedlings, larvae, juveniles, and adults. Each group is raised separately at different farms. “This way, farmers can perfect their know-how more effectively and increase the fish’s survival rate,” Cheng explained.
To maintain the country’s leadership in grouper aquaculture, the government has included the fish as part of a project that aims to double the nation’s high-end agricultural output by 2012.
Towards this end, the COA deputy minister said, the commission will continue providing guidance and support to local aquaculture operators with measures such as creating a quality industry environment to ensure sustainable development, expanding global distribution channels, tapping new markets and developing critical farming techniques to maintain the country’s edge. “We hope to create 2,200 jobs for the sector and increase its output to NT$7 billion in three years,” Hu concluded.
Write to Meg Chang at meg.chang@mail.gio.gov.tw