The coming year will witness the completion and delivery of the new Ministry of Fisheries Wealth’s Aquaculture Centre. This building will represent the national flagship for aquaculture research and development, extension and outreach. The facility, which will be headed up by Dr. Fahad S. Ibrahim, comprises various laboratories, wet areas, aquaria, office, library, meeting and conference rooms also houses a self-contained apartment for guest scientists. Over US$ 1,000,000 will be invested in furnishing the new facility with state-of-art equipment in its four major divisions: physiology and nutrition, disease and pathology, hatchery technologies and environment.

The ground floor of the new facility encompasses a fully isolated quarantine unit with waste systems designed to disinfect effluents prior to their discharge. The main suite of aquaria includes an environmentally controlled broodstock area and larval, fry and juvenile rearing units. All tank systems have been designed to adapt to flow through or recirculation modes. An automated dawn-dusk lighting system has been incorporated into the major holding and experimental areas. All specialist laboratories are also housed on the ground floor of the Centre with the disease and pathology section being physically and biologically contained from the rest of the facility. Access to laboratories and aquaria will be controlled using a card-based security system.

The second floor of the new Centre houses offices, a small library that will specialise in holding resources of regional importance, a dividable conference and teaching area, a smaller meeting suite and service sections. While the shell of the building will be completed by December of this year, the pump house, facility inlets, mechanical, electrical and interior components will not be finished until June 2010. We plan to make the Aquaculture Centre a regional hub for research collaboration and innovation and look forward to being able to invite our colleagues to attend upcoming meetings and workshops on the premises.