Honduras

Collaborating Institutions

Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, DIGEPESCA

Marco Polo Micheletti Bain

Auburn University

Bartholomew Green
David Teichert-Coddington
Claude Boyd


University of Texas

George Ward

Introduction

The PD/A CRSP has collaborated in aquacultural research with the Honduran government at two different sites since 1983. Until 1993, all work was done at the El Carao National Aquaculture Research Center, a freshwater site located at Comayagua, Honduras. In 1993, the focus of the program was shifted to La Lujosa Water Quality Laboratory, a coastal site in southern Honduras. The program in southern Honduras is in collaboration with four Honduran institutions.

Work at the inland site concentrated on aquacultural production systems and management regimes applicable to subsistence farmers and small to mid-sized commercial tilapia producers. In southern Honduras, work concentrated on determining the impact of shrimp farming on the estuarine environment, and investigating techniques for reducing nutrient discharge from ponds.

The Honduras proposal contemplates research and development work at both inland and coastal sites. Research at the coastal site initially will focus on optimization of nutrient additions to ponds to achieve optimal primary productivity and the most profitable production of tilapia. Research at the coastal site would continue prior work on the relationship between shrimp farming and the estuarine environment. An important output of this work would be estimates of estuarine carrying capacity based largely on the past couple of years of data collection.

Work in the estuarine environment is particularly relevant to estuarine areas in Nicaragua and El Salvador, the other two countries that border the Gulf of Fonseca. Development of shrimp farming areas along the Gulf of Fonseca in Nicaragua and El Salvador is beginning in earnest only now. Results of shrimp production systems research conducted in Honduras should be of great interest to shrimp farmers in these neighboring countries. In addition, the estuarine monitoring program in Honduras would be an excellent model to follow in establishing similar programs in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In fact, one planned regionalization activity is to establish communications with the appropriate people in Nicaragua to explore the possibility of implementing an estuarine monitoring program in the Real Estuary system, one of the largest systems in the Gulf of Fonseca. It is necessary also to implement a water quality monitoring program in the Gulf of Fonseca itself with the goal of determining its carrying capacity, which in turn affects directly the carrying capacities of individual estuaries; however, a monitoring program of this type exceeds the scope of the PD/A CRSP.

Once the research program is re-established at the inland experiment station, regionalization plans call for establishment of project activities with commercial tilapia farmers in the northern, eastern and western regions of Honduras. Results of research on intensive tilapia production systems and potential environmental impacts of such activities should be applicable to the nascent commercial tilapia production industries in countries like Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica and Venezuela, as well as to the developed commercial tilapia industries in Colombia and Ecuador.

The first six to eight months of this project will be spent preparing for subsequent experiments. Current agreements with the Government of Honduras are outdated, and need to be rewritten. The laboratory at El Carao has to be renovated and tilapia fingerlings of appropriate size and number will need to be produced for subsequent stock-out in production experiments. Current work at La Lujosa will need to be finished and reported, and agreements with shrimp producers and the Honduras National Association of Aquaculturists (ANDAH) will need to be revised.

Investigations to be Conducted

1.Intensification of Tilapia Production: Effects of Feeding at Different Stocking Rate on Pond Water Quality
2.Estuarine Water Quality Monitoring and Estuarine Carrying Capacity
3.Influence of Daily Water Exchange Volume on Water Quality and Shrimp Production
4.Water Exchange to Rectify Low Dissolved Oxygen