LET’S BUILD VERTICAL FISH FARMS

Since many traditional fishing areas are now polluted and the availability of fish is now dwindling in many seas and oceans, it is now time to build vertical fish farms in buildings as Singapore is already doing. The case of Singapore is different, because the problem there is the lack of available land for horizontal fish farms, hence the vertical option. This is actually not a new idea, because single level fish tanks have been around for many years now. What is new however is the idea of multilevel fish tanks, and now, this is being done inside multistory buildings. The innovation is not so much about stacking fish tanks on top of each other. The innovation is more about controlling the salinity and quality of the water used. Many of us are questioning why we have to import rice, considering that we are supposed to be an agricultural country with plenty of land to be used for farming. Having said that, we should question ourselves why we are importing about 540 thousand metric tons of every year, considering that we have plenty of seas and oceans to fish from. Mr. Jorge Malig and Mr. Ran Quijano are two enterprising Filipinos who are ahead of the pack in designing and building fish tanks for urban fisheries. Aside from creating jobs, their technologies could actually produce fish that are not only safer, but are also cheaper. Safer because the quality of the water is controlled, and cheaper because of the lower transport costs and lesser spoilage rate. IKE SENERES/09088877282/01-01-24