Farming of sea cucumber and seaweed are currently being undertaken in the country to address some ways of enhancing sustainable development of these expensive marine products in Solomon Islands, Fisheries minister John Maneniaru highlighted last week.
This was revealed in the parliament when the Minister was questioned on the funding committed to boost inshore fisheries.
Mr Maneniaru stated that there were no assessments done so far to evaluate feedback of the financial efforts being injected in the projects, however they are slowly working to set some criteria to assess their efforts in enhancing productivity of our inshore fisheries.
He said, there are about 1000 seaweed farmers in the country and they are making good progress, while in Marau project where they farm the sea sucumber it has recorded about 1500 hatcheries of bechedeemers, which is a major breakthrough in the region.
Minister stated they are committed to see the work on those aquaculture projects advancing and he was grateful towards the efforts of our aid-partners who continue to fund some of our fisheries activities.
Maneniaru said funding of consultations work on fisheries comes from aid donors like the New Zealand (NZ) Aid.
By AATAI JOHN
