State of the art of Italian aquaculture.

This paper describes the main features of fish aquaculture in Italy focalizing the attention to the single sectors of the farmed species and their trend for the future. According to aquaculture production statistics published by FEAP (2007), Italy is the fifth largest fish producer in the European Union having a total quantity for 2006 estimated around 60,000 t. This data is exclusively referred to rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), seabream (Sparus aurata), seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and European eel (Anguilla anguilla) but even if we consider the total aquaculture production elaborated by ISMEA (2006) through year 2005 including sturgeons, carps, striped bass, catfish and ornamental fish, Italy ranks fourth with 69,100 t after Norway (655,364 t), Great Britain (141,793 t) and Greece (83,600 t). Over the last 15 years, Italian finfish production has known a decrease related to all the species mainly reared (trout, eel, carps, catfish) except for the eurhyaline species that have had an important expansion. With the developments of mariculture techniques, first with floating cages in sheltered area, and later with submersible cages in open sea area, product coming from offshore facilities became more than half of the total Italian production. Today offshore farms that produce seabass and seabream along the Italian coast are more than 30, mainly in central and south Regions: Liguria (2), Tuscany (1), Latium (3), Campania (3), Calabria (7), Puglia (5), Veneto (1), Sardinia (6) and Sicily (3).