TEHRAN (www.iranfisheries.net) – For the first time in the world, the experts in Inland Water Aquaculture Research Center in Bandar Anzali (a northern Iran port city) have propagated autumn form of Rutilus frisi kutum artificially.

According to Iran’s Fisheries Organization, this fish is one of the most economical species in the southern Caspian Sea with an annual catch of 9-10,000 MT that in turns composes more than 60% of the bony fish caught in this sea.

This figure has root in such projects run by Shilat as artificial propagation and release of juveniles into the Caspian Sea. This was less than 500 MT about 25 years ago due to different reasons including over fishing, lack of precise program for reconstruction of resources, elimination of natural spawning areas, different pollutions, etc.

This fish has two forms of population: autumn and spring. The first one migrates from the sea to the rivers led to the Caspian in mid-autumn and the second one does it in March to find suitable places for spawning. The autumn form remains in the river until it reaches sex maturity but most of them cannot reproduce naturally due to over fishing, water pollution, and lack of suitable places to spawn. Their number has decreased significantly so that they may experience extinction.

On the other hand, after succeeding on determining bionormative of Rutilus frisi kutum aquaculture and introducing it to Iran Fisheries Organization (Shilat), all operations have been focused on the spring population exclusively. Shilat releases more than 150,000,000 pieces of juveniles of this form into the Caspian Sea annually.

Unfortunately, rehabilitation of the autumn population has remained frustrated. So in order to bring the following objectives into the surface, some project titled "artificial propagation of autumn Rutilus frisi kutum" has been funded by "IFRO", and "CEP" (affiliated to UNDP) that is executed by Inland Aquaculture College in Gilan Province. The objectives:

1- To protect genetic diversity of different spices of Rutilus Frisit Kutum, and prevent destruction of autumn population in the Caspian Sea.

2- To propagate Rutilus Frisit Kutum artificially in order to revive the resources to increase production in turn.

3- To provide bionormatives of aquaculture for the autumn form and introduce it to Shilat to plan rehabilitation of the resources.

4- To improve fisheries economy in southern Caspian Sea.

At present, although the juveniles are kept in dense population in the ponds, they have grown to a weight of 1 gram and ready to be released. It has occurred because feeding and culture conditions have been well managed.

Of course, a great amount of the juveniles have reached a weight of more than 3-4 grams. it is planned to release 50% of the juveniles and release rest of them when they grow a little bit heavier.

Moreover, about 5% of the juveniles are tagged using "Elastomres" and then released so that Shilat could evaluate their fisheries return during 3-4 next years. About 1% of the fish is kept in the ponds to study artificial feeding and examine feasibility of culturing autumn population for local market.

The first group of the fish amounted about 3,000,000 pieces were released on July 5 at the International Research Center of Anzali Wetland where authorities from CEP and Iran Fisheries Organization as well as provincial officials attended.