This video was filmed during October 2014 in the River Nile, Damietta region.
Video credit: Willy Oviedo (Uruguay)
Typically, freshwater cages in Egypt has a surface area of 100m2 (10×10 m) with a depth of about 5 meters. Cage farmers gained enough experience in cage construction and management. The floats used in cages are barrels (plastic/metals), while the cage netting is made of double layers. Over the growing season, nets are changed with nets with larger mesh size the match the growing size of caged fish and to allow better water exchange. The production of the 500-m3 cage vary significantly from as low as three tons to ten tons or even more. Often commercial fish feed is used whether delivered manually or through fish feeders.
The cages in the same location have been judged illegal several years ago and have been already removed for the Nile due to problems related to environment and navigation concerns.
Afterwards, there have been different opinions regarding the coming back of cages but in a more controlled environmentally friendly cages. The use of silver carp instead of tilapia has been suggested as a friendly fish species which does not require commercial feed and hence less pollution to the hosting environment. However, because of marketing difficulty of silver carp, cage farmers could not give up tilapia, their favorite species. Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus is the species farmed in cages.
