Egypt plans to release 47M fish seeds in Nile River, lakes by mid-2022

CAIRO – 23 April 2022: The General Authority for Fish Resources Development announced Saturday that the number of fish seeds planned to get introduced in the Nile River and lakes for FY2021/2022 is 47 million.

The breeds of those are Nile Tilapia, Grass Carp, and Silver Carp. However, the one million fish seeds - out of planned 5.25 million - placed in Fayoum's Wadi Al Rayan belong to the Tobara breed. Such Tobara fish seeds were produced by Abou Al Shaqaf incubator in Beheira, and another incubator affiliated with Lake Akyad in Sharqia.  

The authority's chairman, Salah al-Moselhy, detailed to press in February the reasons Egypt ranks sixth globally, and first in Africa in fish production since 2019.

The official highlighted that the country does not rely on wild fishing solely as it possesses fisheries spanning over a total of 300,000 feddans and producing 1.6 million tons per annum.

During the past seven years, large fisheries were introduced in Kafr El Sheikh (Berket Ghelyoun), and near the New Suez Canal. That is in addition to cleansing lakes located in Lower Egypt. Those included Lake Manzala, Lake Maryout, Lake Borolos, Lake Bardawil, and Lake Qaroun.  

Further, Egypt is now producing 92 million fish seeds, and has been able to improve Tilapia breeds. The official noted that Egypt works on introducing new technology that increases the productivity of fisheries, which is currently 5 to 15 tons per feddan.