Abstract

Red drum Sciaenops ocellatus was introduced in Martinique (French West Indies) in the ’80 by growers to promote marine fish culture. Based on biological knowledge on this species in USA and on current methods applied in temperate marine fish, a standard method has been perfected in order to supply fingerlings to cage farm in open sea. A need of improvement appeared on larval culture techniques in order to 1) enhance performances in private hatcheries, 2) control variability inter and intra experiments to allow expression of statistical differences in experimental condition. Improvement of rearing conditions in 2004 – 2005 conducts to an important increase of performances (survival, growth and morphology). During this period, 18 experiments on bi- and multi-parental spawns were conducted as part of a breeding program on captive broodstock. Between 2001 and 2005, average survival after weaning increased from 19% to 78% and growth was two times higher inducing a dramatic decrease of culture duration (60 days to 35 days) and facilities size. On the other hand, deformities observed on fingerlings decreased to less than 5%. The conditions conducting to these higher performances are linked to the consideration of a better welfare of the larvae in the tank obtained thanks to a balance between three main parameters, prey availability, hydrodynamics and water quality. Transfer to a small scale private hatchery confirmed these improvements in production conditions and contributed to a drop of the production cost of fingerlings. From a 10% survival observed in 2002 and 2003, performance increased to 22% in 2004, 62% in 2005 and 90% in 2006, in parallel with the decrease of the need of technical assistance, confirming the assimilation of the new standard by the producer

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