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At the heart of a James Bond-style facility in Jebel Ali lies a key component of the UAE’s food security programme: thousands and thousands of salmon, swimming in circles around enormous tanks.

#Food #FarmedSalmon #Sustainability

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00:00This morning, we're here at Fish Farm in Jebel Ali, where the tanks that you see around
00:05us produce over 3 million kilos of fish every single year.
00:10Those include shrimp, yellowtail, and hibachi in technology that's known as recirculated
00:17aquaculture systems, where the fish can be grown artificially and farmed right here in
00:23Jebel Ali, away from the sea.
00:26We're going to take a look around the system and learn a little bit more about why the
00:29fish are grown here, and what difference it makes growing them here as opposed to in
00:33the sea.
00:34Well, we have a very exciting project over here, it's a company which started with the
00:50support of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, the Crown Prince of Dubai, and definitely
00:55his energy, his encouragement, and his risk-taking also, to bet on us that we can actually succeed
01:07in such a thing.
01:08We started with farming sea bream and sea bass in cages in Diba Fijera, also then we
01:18started with farming hamour in Jebel Ali pond, and also we had our facility here in
01:28Jebel Ali, which is a land farm, having tanks inside a big warehouse, so just an aquarium.
01:39And we are having here the yellowtail kingfish, we are having the shrimps, and we are having
01:46the organic sea bass, so whatever we are farming here in Jebel Ali, it's 100% organic.
01:57As we get concerned about our environment, which is air, the fish obviously in the sea
02:02and in the water, they are sensitive, and in fact extremely sensitive, to what's in
02:08the water.
02:09So our first thing is we monitor the water quality three times a day for about seven
02:14different parameters, and we are constantly modifying, I won't say constantly modifying,
02:20but we are modifying as is necessary, which is actually quite rarely in fact.
02:27Then we come to other more esoteric factors like the light, the light intensity, it's
02:34not an esoteric factor, but temperature is a critical one as well, it's one of the water
02:38quality parameters.
02:40For example, one of our species, Atlantic salmon, is running at 15 degrees.
02:44When you consider out in the ocean, from where we are taking this 3% water, it could be up
02:49to 45 degrees, if there is any breakdown in our system, 45 degree water will pass to the
02:57salmon and they will be in trouble.
03:01We can control the tidal movements, the level of water in the tank, so we can simulate anything
03:08that we want to really, and as you can see from the fish, they seem to be pretty happy
03:12with what we are simulating here at the moment.
03:15So as you can see behind me, we are here in the Atlantic salmon room, with the tanks that
03:20contain the salmon being bred here.
03:23They recently entered supermarkets around the UAE last Friday, and the company says
03:28it plans to scale up its operations in light of that, with new challenges ahead, including
03:34new breeds of local fish, not found anywhere else in the UAE.
03:39The company claims to be antibiotic free and much fresher than the fish imported from around
03:45the world.
03:46Whether people adopt it and eat it is another thing, there are still concerns among the
03:51general public about how this is actually farmed, but the owners say it's much healthier
03:56and much fresher than imported fish, so maybe time will tell.
04:02For now, the operation seems to be going swimmingly, with plans, as I said, to increase operations.
04:08And that's it from us today at Gulf News, this is Fish Farm, I'm Ed Clouds, thank you
04:13very much for watching.
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