Explorations of Seawater Recirculation Technology for Rearing Chilean Scallop, Argopecten purpuratus, from Larvae to Seed

摘要

Larvae production usually is an unsatisfied need for many species of interest for aquacultural purposes. Most the times larvae required to stock nursery aquacultural systems are taken from natural seawater as it is still the case of the Chilean scallop larvae Argopecten purpuratus (Lamarck, 1819) (Farias et al., 1998). However, natural larvae come with natural cycles tied to seasonal conditions, which makes the scallop business to depend excessively from environmental conditions. Additionally, in Chile there is mainly one bay, Bahia Tongoy, with an important natural scallop spawning which was able to provide enough larvae to support the local industry in the 90's (von Brand et al., 2006). Today natural spawning from Bahia Tongoy is not enough to satisfy the national industry demand for scallop seeds (Avila et al., 1994), and therefore many hatcheries have been built in order to increase availability of settled larvae for the nursery systems (Anonym, 2000).