Aquaculture Development Solutions is a podcast about the science, business, and policy of aquaculture in developing countries. Hosted by aquaculture researchers Bas de Vos and Siyabonga Mdletshe, each episode brings in a specialist to dig into a specific challenge or opportunity facing the sector.
The conversations cover a wide range: seaweed farming, species diversification, animal health, product development, socio-economics, and collaboration. The guests are researchers, entrepreneurs, and practitioners working at the frontier of what aquaculture can become for the developing countries.
Nutrition, Product Development, and What Aquaculture Can Learn from Feeding Children in Southeast Asia
Dr. Frank Wieringa is co-director of the nutrition research group at IRD (the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development) and has spent over 30 years developing food-based solutions to malnutrition, primarily in Southeast Asia and Africa. Dr. Maretha Van Heerden is head of the functional food research unit at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, where she has worked on the nutritional composition of South African seaweeds, mussels, oysters, sea urchin, and abalone.
This episode moves further from pure aquaculture than most, and is the better for it. Frank walks through the process of developing fish-based complementary and therapeutic foods in Cambodia, including a fish paste wafer that last year treated over 11,000 severely malnourished children with a recovery rate above 90%, and is now being scaled nationally. He also gets into the development of fish-based snacks for schoolchildren in Indonesia as a practical replacement for nutritionally empty junk food, and why catfish, not saltwater fish, turned out to be most acceptable. Marita covers the nutritional case for aquatic foods, the near-total absence of local seaweed products in South African shops despite 3,000 kilometres of coastline, and why children tested with fish oil emulsion had no problem with it at all. The conversation ends on a point both guests make independently: interdisciplinary work is not optional in this space, and research that stays in a silo goes nowhere.
Made possible by LIMAQUA.
16 Jul 2026
Socioeconomics and Enterprise Development in South African Aquaculture
Dr. Bernadette Brown-Webb is the CEO of the Saldanha Aquaculture Development Centre, a not-for-profit company on South Africa's west coast providing integrated development support to historically disadvantaged entrepreneurs in the aquaculture sector. She spent 20 years at the CSIR in enterprise development before completing a PhD on self-sustainable enterprise creation in the aquaculture sector, using the Saldanha mussel industry as her case study.
The episode covers how to define socioeconomics in aquaculture, the work of the Saldanha Aquaculture Development Centre, a Gracilaria cultivation trial running at African Olive Trading's mussel farm in partnership with DFFE and UCT, and African Olive Trading as a case study in long-term aquaculture success (400+ jobs, grown from 5 to 30 hectares over two decades). She also walks through the key factors that determine whether an aquaculture enterprise succeeds or fails, the practical challenges of market assessment, and why integrated development support rather than funding alone is what the sector needs to become genuinely inclusive.
Made possible by LIMAQUA.
30 Jun 2026
Inside Mauritius's Largest Fish Farm and the Case for Intra-African Aquaculture Networks
Nadeem Nazurally (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadeem-nazurally-21b85748/)is an Associate Professor at the University of Mauritius, supervising PhD research at what is likely the largest marine finfish farm in the Western Indian Ocean, producing around 4,000 to 4,500 tonnes of red drum a year. His work spans environmental monitoring around aquaculture sites, coral restoration, IMTA development in open lagoon systems, sea urchin trials, and seaweed research aimed at getting local communities to actually eat what grows wild on their coastline.
The conversation covers how his research collaborations with the farm stay independent (he publishes regardless of what the data shows), the structure and funding behind AfriMAQUA, the EU-backed network connecting African aquaculture researchers, his collaboration with Hokkaido University on fisheries and blue economy projects, the politics around shark fears that froze new aquaculture licensing in Mauritius for years, and why he thinks the continent needs a stronger, better-funded intra-African aquaculture network.
Made possible by LIMAQUA.
18 Jun 2026
Sea Urchins, Seaweed Startups, and Getting Into African Aquaculture
Two early-career researchers working at very different ends of the aquaculture spectrum. Aimee Cloete is a PhD student at UCT developing sea urchin aquaculture in South Africa, with a focus on integrating Cape Sea Urchin production into existing abalone systems. Anga Mbeyiya is the founder of One Blue, a seaweed startup connecting rural coastal cooperatives in the Eastern Cape and Kenya to markets for biostimulant fertilizers and seaweed products.
The conversation covers how they both ended up in aquaculture, what a research career actually looks like week to week, the persistent gap between research output and commercial uptake in South Africa, what makes academic supervisors matter more than people expect, and how to get into the industry without a conventional route in.
Made possible by LIMAQUA.
7 Jun 2026
Aquatic Animal Health in Aquaculture: Disease, Diagnosis, and Holistic Management
Dr. Isabelle Arzul is a research scientist at Ifremer in La Tremblade, France, one of the most important oyster-producing regions in Europe. A veterinarian by training with a PhD on oyster herpesvirus, she has spent over 20 years specializing in shellfish diseases. She led the EU Reference Laboratory for Mollusc Diseases for nearly 15 years and now heads the ASIM team (Adaptation and Health of Marine Invertebrates) at Ifremer, which combines research with diagnosis, surveillance, and training across the European national laboratory network.
In this episode, we look at aquatic animal health through the lens of someone operating at the highest level of the field. Isabelle walks us through the role of reference laboratories and why Europe has built a coordinated network of public institutions to harmonize disease surveillance across countries. She explains why disease outbreaks are never just about the pathogen, covering the interplay between the host, environment, and husbandry practices, and how this understanding has led to concrete, practical changes on oyster farms, including a farming calendar that reduced mortality by 30%. We also get into the difference between listed and unlisted diseases, diagnostic methods from histology to PCR, selective breeding for disease resistance, and a fascinating vaccination-like approach that primes oyster immune systems against herpesvirus before exposure. While Isabelle's expertise is in shellfish, the principles translate directly to abalone, sea urchins, and other species being developed across southern Africa.
This episode is part of the LIMAQUA Focus Series, produced under the LIMAQUA Programme, a South African-French joint research initiative on nutrition-sensitive marine aquaculture.
7 Jun 2026
Beyond Abalone: Diversifying South African Aquaculture
Marissa Brink-Hull is a production scientist at the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment, with a PhD in genetics from Stellenbosch University and postdoctoral experience on EU-funded IMTA research across the Atlantic. Her work spans population genetics, hatchery and grow-out technology for low-trophic species, and microbiome dynamics in aquaculture systems, with a particular focus on advancing the Cape Sea Urchin and collector urchin toward commercial viability in South Africa. Niall Vine is Associate Professor of Zoology at the University of Fort Hare, where he heads the Fort Hare Aquaculture Research Unit. His career has spanned probiotic development for fish, marine hatchery management, and research on species ranging from copepods and abalone to seahorses, silver cob, and sea cucumbers.
In this episode, we dig into species diversification as both a commercial risk-reduction strategy and a food security tool. Marissa walks us through the state of sea urchin aquaculture in South Africa, covering the differences between the warm-water collector urchin and the cold-water Cape Sea Urchin, and why the latter is particularly well suited to integration with existing abalone farm infrastructure. We then look at IMTA system design, including a small-scale study integrating sea urchins, seaweed, and bloodworms in a circular system, and what scaling that up actually looks like in practice. Neil brings in his own bloodworm research, the fatty acid case for using worms in broodstock diets, and what diversification has looked like across his wide-ranging research career.
This episode is part of the LIMAQUA Focus Series, produced under the LIMAQUA Programme, a South African-French joint research initiative on nutrition-sensitive marine aquaculture.
7 Jun 2026
Seaweed Aquaculture in Africa: From East African Farms to Southern Africa's Kelp Forests
John Bolton is Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town with over 40 years of research on seaweeds along Africa's coastlines, and has been very involved in practically all forms of seaweed aquaculture in Africa and further afield. Sarah Halse works in research and production at a South African abalone farm, where she manages large-scale Ulva production and has developed hands-on expertise in seaweed-based feeding systems for abalone.
In this episode, we take a geographic tour of seaweed aquaculture across Africa. We start in East Africa with Tanzania's Eucheuma industry, the continent's one real commercial success story, and explore why it took hold there and not elsewhere. We then move to the Western Indian Ocean islands before heading south to the cold-water coasts of South Africa and Namibia, where we dig into land-based Ulva production, the role of Gracilaria as an abalone weaning feed, sustainable kelp harvesting, and the ambitious offshore Kelp Blue project in Lüderitz. We also get into the open question of non-indigenous species, the challenges of scaling seaweed markets in the West, and why years of tacit knowledge often matter more than technology.
This episode is part of the LIMAQUA Focus Series, produced under the LIMAQUA Programme, a South African-French joint research initiative on nutrition-sensitive marine aquaculture.
7 Jun 2026
South Africa's Aquaculture Research Landscape: Priorities, Challenges, and What Comes Next
In this episode, we sit down with two of South Africa's leading aquaculture researchers and research managers to take stock of where the sector stands and where it needs to go.
Dr. Cliff Jones is a researcher at the Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science at Rhodes University, with 25 years of experience developing aquaculture technologies in close collaboration with industry. Andrea Bernatzeder is the Director of Aquaculture Innovation and Technology Development at South Africa's Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and Environment.
The conversation covers how South Africa prioritises aquaculture research, the case for stakeholder-driven science over ivory tower research, and what it takes for new technologies to actually reach the ground. They dig into the troubles facing the abalone industry, the lessons from Egypt's tilapia sector and South Korea's seaweed industry, and why socioeconomics is now just as important as the biology. They also debate how much research focus should go to supporting existing industries versus developing new ones, and what a more strategic, consolidated approach to aquaculture development in South Africa could look like.
This episode was produced in partnership with the LIMAQUA programme.
7 Jun 2026
What is LIMAQUA? Inside Africa's Marine Aquaculture Research Lab
In this episode, we sit down with the two founders of LIMAQUA, a South African-French joint research and training programme working to develop sustainable, nutrition-sensitive marine aquaculture across the African continent.
Dr. Brett Macey is a specialist scientist at South Africa's Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment, where he has spent 18 years developing sustainable aquaculture technologies, with a focus on integrated systems and animal health. Dr. Maria Darias is a research professor at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), based in South Africa, whose work sits at the intersection of aquaculture and human nutrition.
Together they explain what nutrition-sensitive aquaculture means, why Africa has some of the lowest marine aquaculture production in the world despite its coastal potential, and what LIMAQUA is doing about it. The conversation covers integrated abalone and seaweed systems, the nutritional profiling of farmed species, the circular economy potential of aquaculture byproducts, and how LIMAQUA is building capacity across the continent through its Africa-wide research network, AFRIMAQUA.
This episode was produced in partnership with the LIMAQUA programme.
7 Jun 2026
Welcome to Aquaculture Development Solutions
Welcome to the Aquaculture Development Solutions podcast, where science meets practical action in African aquaculture.
In this opening episode, hosts Bas de Vos and Siyabonga Mdletshe introduce themselves and the series. Bas is a marine biologist and aquaculture researcher (PhD, UCT) specialising in integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, emerging species like sea cucumbers and sea urchins, and aquaculture systems modelling. Siya is a Master's student in Aquaculture at Rhodes University, where his research focuses on abalone anaesthesia and the effects of low pH and CO2.
Together, they explore why African aquaculture is at a critical turning point: the gap between its potential and current production, the key structural and practical challenges holding the sector back, and why evidence-based, locally grounded solutions matter more than ever.
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