Abstract

Mexico has 11,500 km of littoral zone. Fishery production in 1994 was 1,260,019 metric tons (mt) with aquaculture contributing 171,389 mt. Species traditionally reared in Mexico are trout, catfish, eastern oyster, carp, tilapia and freshwater crayfish. Many aquatic species have been cultured on an experimental and/or pilot scale. However, only a few species have reached commercial-scale development, including mojarra (47%), American oyster (22%), carp (14%) and shirmp (10%). Only shrimp and a little quantity of oyster were produced by a intensive aquaculture. The other 90% aquaculture production is produced by extensive aquaculture.\Mexico has 79 institutions in Marine Science or Biology, which 23 have been working with 60 aquatics species, and they have produced 162 scientific manuscripts (Science Citation Index). These results show few studies for anyone aquatic species. 52 studies were conducted on shrimp (Panaeus vannamei = 47 studies, 30.3%), 51 papers (32.9%) on mollusks (Haliotis = 15 papers, 10.3%), 28 on fish (14%), scallops (Argopecten ventricosus = 13 papers) and queen conch (Strombus gigas = 10 studies). Marine fishes and freshwater fishes have been less studied. Seventeen subject areas were identified; nutrition was the most studied (32 studies), while others included pollution, physiology, reproduction, etc. Mexico does not have an academic institution specializing in aquaculture, and so it begs the question. What is better for developing the aquaculture industry in Mexico? - to have Institutes specializing in particular subject are, or to have Research Institutes with many specialists?.

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