European seabass - Fertilization

Today, European seabass is mainly farmed under intensive cage culture conditions. In the early days, efforts were made to produce European seabass along with other marine fish such as the gilthead seabream in lagoons and large open waterbodies (“valiculture”, in Italy), with productivity ranging between 30 and 150 kg/ha/year; however, the practice has been considerably reduced over the past two decades. Some efforts have also been made to farm European seabass under semi-intensive polyculture conditions (with several other finfish species) in salt pans in some parts of southern Europe (Portugal and Spain). The productivity under these conditions is relatively low, less than 2 tonnes/ha over the full production cycle.  Production costs under such farming systems are relatively high compared to those for intensive cage farms. Even under such extensive or semi-intensive systems, there are no special fertilization practices.