As a high-economic-value aquatic product, seahorses are not only ornamental but also a precious traditional Chinese medicinal material. Recently, seahorses have been studied for their multiple conditioning and tonic effects, and are expected in the future to be applied in healthcare, beauty, and health food sectors, making seahorses even more precious.

Known as "Southern Ginseng," the seahorse has been a precious medicinal material since ancient times, and its wide range of uses and large market have consistently led to a situation where supply falls short of demand.

Inability to achieve mass production becomes an obstacle Causing market supply to fall short of demand

In recent years, as the physiologically active substances and conditioning effects of seahorses have been successively verified and confirmed through scientific analysis, seahorses have become a diversified aquatic organism and aquaculture target. However, because global trade has listed seahorses as a precious and rare protected species, commercial supply requires artificial breeding through successive generations to the second filial generation (F2), as well as obtaining relevant certification documents during trade circulation. These various restrictions have instead built up thresholds and safeguards, and have also transformed into the main considerations and driving force for industry investment in breeding and aquaculture technology development.

In fact, in the field of seahorse breeding and aquaculture technology, Taiwan has already made considerable progress. However, due to past issues such as feeding bait and labor consumption, aquaculture costs have been too high. In addition, seahorses mainly grow in natural sea areas with better environments. Once water quality is poor or temperature conditions are unsuitable, breeding easily fails, causing losses. Therefore, the output of artificial seahorses remains low and cannot achieve commercial mass production, making stable production and continuous supply a major challenge for industry development.

Innovative seahorse breeding and aquaculture planning Comprehensive consideration from production to sales

Facing the high economic value of seahorses in the market, currently, with the support of the Council of Agriculture and the guidance of the Agricultural Technology Research Institute, and with seahorse aquaculture technology developed by the Department of Aquaculture at National Taiwan Ocean University, a relatively complete and innovative plan has been proposed in terms of production direction, methods, product forms, and even market targeting.

Associate Professor Huang Chih-Yang of the Department of Aquaculture at National Taiwan Ocean University stated, "In addition to hoping to specifically enhance breeding efficiency, expand production, and maintain continuous output, we are also separately targeting diversified utilization in four major areas: traditional medicinal materials, ornamental aquariums, biomedical health care, and cultural and creative crafts. That is to say, whether large or small, alive or dead, even beautiful or ugly, seahorses can fully realize their value, achieving the most complete and concrete utilization development and value-added marketing." In other words, in addition to mass production, safety control and the development of diversified utilization value of seahorses, such as developing body color regulation technology to enhance the commercial value of the aquarium market, or medicinal seahorse analysis, guidance and promotion of drug-free aquaculture technology, and even the construction and maintenance of a commercial seahorse germplasm bank, have become key tasks of this project.

Intelligent monitoring Successfully creating an artificial breeding and aquaculture environment

Seahorses are difficult to cultivate. In addition to being picky eaters, they have very demanding requirements for the aquaculture environment. Therefore, the Department of Aquaculture at National Taiwan Ocean University partnered with Tongrun, which specializes in smart water quality monitoring. Through the water quality monitor (OCTET) independently developed by Tongrun, information from the aquaculture water body is integrated with a cloud platform and other peripheral devices, providing aquaculture users with a more efficient aquaculture water quality monitoring system.

"This monitor can simultaneously measure multiple water quality parameters, upload them to a cloud database at any time, and perform various functions such as monitoring, recording, analysis, and feedback alerts. Users can easily view monitoring data from their mobile phones or computers, along with corresponding prevention and treatment recommendations to improve survival rates." Shared Ge Shih-Hao, CEO of Tongrun Co., Ltd., which has long been deeply engaged in the "detection" field. "Through the technology system, reports and data are produced daily and stored in the cloud backend. Not only has the seahorse recovery rate been raised from 10% to 50%, but after successfully establishing SOPs, we can also aim for whole-plant export in the future and apply this complete system to other high-economic-value aquatic products. Of course, we hope future technology can be further improved, and even allow live seahorses to be delivered directly to the market."

When technology combines with creativity, industry-academia collaboration has not only transformed an old factory area into a seahorse greenhouse aquaculture pond, but also begun successfully exporting to European and American, Hong Kong, China and mainland China markets. Currently, the first-phase project goal has also been achieved, with over 15,000 seahorse fry cultivated, and the project has already entered the second phase ahead of schedule.

Creating more possibilities for Taiwan's aquaculture industry

Climate change poses enormous challenges to global fishery environments worldwide. Also, because global catches are reaching their fishing limits year by year, aquaculture fisheries have become increasingly important in recent years. In this regard, both Huang Chih-Yang and Ge Shih-Hao unanimously stated, "Through the combination of parent stock, cultivation, or selection and culling during the artificial breeding process, under the premise of complying with animal welfare, it is possible to create strains or individuals with distinctive ornamental value. In addition to enriching the composition of breeding subjects, this can also invigorate the sustainable development of the industry. More importantly, if the power of technology can be properly utilized, current bottlenecks can not only be resolved, but efficiency improvements can also promote industrial upgrading."

In any case, the importance of breeding and aquaculture technology to the ornamental aquarium industry is by no means limited to the accumulation of quantity or simply meeting the demands of the consumer market. More importantly, it also plays an important role in species, environmental, and ecological conservation. It is believed that in the future, with industry-academia collaboration and technological support, more diverse possibilities can be developed for Taiwan's aquaculture industry.

Note: The industry-academia collaboration between Professor Huang Chih-Yang and Tongrun Co., Ltd. was terminated at the end of October 2018.

Related information

For further details on the research and development results of this project, please contact Mr. He of the Agricultural Technology Research Institute, phone: 03-5185049, email: [email protected]