Fish escape from farm off St John's Island

Anglers reel in free bumper catch
Sea bass that escaped from govt fish farm likely ended up on dinner tables
Teh Joo Lin & Jessica Lim Straits Times 24 Jun 11;

BOAT operator Goh Chwee Leng was manning his office at Marina South Pier when he spotted something fishy: Returning anglers were lugging boxes and bags brimming with sea bass.

A group of eight anglers had reeled in 85 fish. Another fisherman had caught 26, Mr Goh told The Straits Times as he recounted the events he witnessed two weekends ago.

'I couldn't believe it. People were just bringing back bags and bags of fish, and it was all sea bass,' said the 61-year-old.

But their catch was another's loss. The sea bass had most likely come from a government fish farm off St John's Island.

The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) confirmed that sea bass had escaped from its farm off the island earlier this month, in its first such incident in five years.

The fleeing fish filed out of a 10cm tear in the net-cage.

The spokesman said: 'We discovered a small tear in one of our net-cages around the first weekend of this month. We promptly rectified the situation. However, some sea bass might have made their way out of the net-cage and aggregated in the waters around St John's island.'

Word in the fishing community that thousands of fish were on the loose sent anglers flocking to the area.

The agency estimated that fewer than 500 fish had escaped. Fish farmers said that depending on its size, a net-cage can house 10,000 to 20,000 fish when full.

The AVA uses the farm to conduct research and development trials to develop and improve fish-farming techniques.

It is part of the Marine Aquaculture Centre on St John's Island, which opened in 2003. Apart from developing new cage designs to improve fish production, it also conducts growth trials of fish such as sea bass, cobia and pompano. The findings are shared with the local industry.

The spokesman did not say how the tear occurred, but she added: 'We do not release fish into the sea but there will be rare occasions when some fish escape from our farm due to damage to our nets, which may be caused by floating debris from the open sea.'

Mr Joep Kleine Staarman, who runs a sea bass farm on Pulau Semakau, said the escape is unlikely to have any ecological impact on the area.

He said: 'It's a local fish - there are wild sea bass all over the southern island waters. The number that escaped is quite small. With the number of fishermen in the area, they don't stand a chance.'

It is unclear when anglers first got wind of the escape. A 38-year-old angler, who declined to be named, said he found out about it during a fishing trip two weeks ago. The civil servant and his friends sought shelter on St John's Island during a storm and spotted a boat of anglers off the coast.

'When the boat came back, we saw that they had a lot of fish,' he said, adding that he went back the next day to try his luck. He and his friends were rewarded with a haul of more than 20 sea bass within a few hours, he said. But the stock seems to have been depleted as they returned home empty-handed on Sunday, their last of several trips.

Farmed fish typically do not venture far as they mill around their old home waiting for food.

Fish farmers contacted had their own tales of escape to share.

Mr Yeo King Kwee, who runs a farm off Lim Chu Kang, said 5,000 sea bass fingerlings escaped last month, costing him $6,000. He said: 'I went to feed the fish and no fish came to the surface. I knew there was something wrong, and when I pulled up the net I saw a huge hole in it.'

Nets can be torn by sharks or the propellers of passing boats.

The latest escape has whetted the appetites of boat operators like Mr Goh in more ways than one. Besides enjoying a swell in business, he also received five sea bass of about 2kg each from the anglers. He said: 'I steamed the fish. It's really fresh and tasty.'