Vietnamese start farming rare freshwater fish

Vietnamese residents have started farming the rare Siamese giant carp, which can fetch more than $60 per kilo when wild-caught.

IntraFish Media

Residents in An Giang in Vietnam are starting to raise Siamese giant carp, a rare and endangered freshwater fish found in South East Asia, reports The Saigon Times Daily.

Also called the giant barb, the fish is found in Thailand, Cambodia and in Vietnam's Vam Nao region, an area linking the Tien and Hau rivers in An Giang Province.

Considered to be endangered, the giant barb is among the largest freshwater fish in the world, and can weigh more than 100 kilos.

This rarity makes it expensive -- traders in An Giang and Dong Thap offered to pay VND 1.4 million (€50.7/$67.2) a kilo for a wild-caught fish, with some reports of higher offers stilll, said The Saigon Times Daily.

"Now, the sale of a 140-kilogram fish enables a fisherman to build a brick house with a metal roof," the newspaper said.

As a result, many giant barbs of 10 to tens of kilos are now being raised in the Mekong Delta. These are smaller and sell for less than the wild counterparts, with prices ranging from VND 250,000 (€9.06/$12) to VND 450,000 (€16.3/$21.6) a kilo for fish of 5 to 20 kilos in size, it said.

According to The Saigon Times Daily, efforts at farming the fish started in 2005, when the National Breeding Center for Southern Freshwater Aquaculture, a division of Research Institute for Aquaculture No. 2, started a project to recreate and develop giant barb genes for preservation and cultivation purposes.

The center now has nearly 100,000 giant barb fries, it said.

Another agency, the An Giang Aquaculture Breeding Center, is also set to supply about 100,000 fries to the market.

The giant barb can grow by half a kilo to a kilo per year, and can reach 6 to 8 kilos in three years, it said.

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