The Fisheries Research Center in Jeddah held a training course, the first of its kind, on farming in floating cage systems. The training course comes within the marine fish farming program, which is supervised by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture. The training course was held at the Fisheries Research Center headquarters in Jeddah during the period from 16 - 18 September, 2014.

The training course has been specified for researchers in the Fisheries Research Center in Jeddah, as well as a number of researchers from the Fisheries Research Centers of the Ministry of Agriculture and some representatives from the private sector. Experts in floating cages, marine environment and geographic information system (GIS) gave lectures during the sessions.

This training course forms part of a comprehensive project sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture and the FAO to support the marine fish farming, which lasts until the year 2016. The project undertakes studies and research related to the production of fish and selection of species and focuses on the floating cages Systems as one of the systems that have been chosen for culture in the Kingdom. It is expected that the culture of fish in floating cage systems will constitute the largest portion of the different farming systems in the Kingdom. This would promote the tendency towards increased production of marine fish during the coming years, and the attempt to achieve the major goal of the National Strategy to support the aquaculture sector, which aims at achieving self-sufficiency and contributing to national food security by reaching one million metric tons of marine products by the year 2029 G.

The last day of the training was dedicated to studying some of the selected sites to set up floating cage farms, and identify the most important selection criteria, whether environmental, geographical or social, as well as presenting the program of the geographical information system program (GIS) and its role in the selection of the most suitable sites for farming in floating cages.