The fourth workshop on aquaculture biosecurity, organized jointly by the Saudi Aquaculture Society and the Ministry of Agriculture, was held at Al Salam Holiday Inn in Jeddah on 14 -15 September, 2014.

The first day of the workshop was devoted to the current situation of the shrimp farming projects in the Kingdom and the mechanisms used to implement the biosecurity protocol and the Ministry of Agriculture plans to follow-up and supervise these projects. Dr. Luis Fernando, the biosecurity expert in the Biosecurity Division of the Department of Aquaculture, MOA, gave a presentation in which he explained that the current results are still encouraging as they didn’t show any occurrence of viral diseases in shrimp farms so far. He added that all farms are now returning to their normal production.

This was followed by a review of the experiences of some shrimp farming projects in the Kingdom, in which all farms agreed to the continued improvement of the level of performance, following full compliance with the implementation of the bio-security protocol, and that they did not record any problems caused by diseases or any other problems during the current production cycle

Moreover, some aquaculture experts from some fish farming companies reviewed the technical aspects of the operations, and means of controlling diseases, as well as the inspection procedures followed before importing of fingerlings and their entry into the farms in, accordance with the requirements of the biosecurity protocol.

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It is to be noted that some fish farms which produce fish in floating cages import a large part of its needs of the fish fingerling, especially Seabream, from outside the Kingdom due to the lack of hatcheries which produce this type of fingerlings so far.

The second day of the workshop was dedicated to the contribution from several sections of the fish health and safety laboratory in Jeddah, which is the reference laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, and was recently operated to carry out procedures to analyze, test and follow-up fish diseases and other diseases associated with aquaculture sector in the Kingdom...

The laboratory contains all the important sections equipped with the latest equipment and devices necessary to examine fish diseases and water and soil quality.