During the recent Blue Invest Forum 2022 held in Seychelles, much attention was given to the Aquaculture department. We heard a lot about this sector and even though it started to develop in 2007, Seychellois are still learning about the investment opportunities in that sector. Seychelles NATION met with Aubrey Lesperance, the head of the Aquaculture department who invites more Seychellois to come forward and learn and invest in this sector.
Seychelles NATION: Mr Lesperance tell us about aquaculture itself in Seychelles, mainly about your department
Aubrey Lesperance: Basically, our department itself right now consists of sixteen staff members. We have most of our staff in the research and operational side of the department. They are the ones conducting all the operations, running the facilities and running research and experiments with regard to aquaculture. They have been working along the line of experimenting with a few of the species that you can see and they have been trying to prove a lot of the concepts and insinuations that we have. For example, can we grow Bourgeois (Red Snapper)? They have been running these trials. There are several species of seaweeds for example. They have done the trials in the tanks and test with different parameters to see how fast they grow, because all these information are important for the private sector.
Then we have the other side, which is the regulatory side. We are the ones who interact a lot with the investors so when they apply for their licenses, we discuss their concepts and which species is going to be ideal. We also clear a lot of doubts that they have. We tell them about the policies and restrictions. We go down the list and then once they are ready, we assist them with preparing their business plan and then reviewing all the applications in regards to their project.
Seychelles NATION: When was aquaculture launched or become popular in Seychelles?
Mr Lesperance: We launched it officially last year but the work started way earlier before that. I started at SFA (Seychelles Fishing Authority) in 2008 but there was a project in the region which started in 2007. It was a regional assessment of aquaculture where some experts were assessing aquaculture potential in Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania, and Comoros. The EU (European Union) asked them to do this assessment because they were getting random applications from each of those countries. They assessed the environment and also the legal framework for if there are provisions for aquaculture to develop in those countries.
Seychelles got a tick because there were lots of potential but we did not have a legal framework in place, so the government commissioned a scoping exercise to be done. A specific one just for Seychelles, and that is when the experts came in and started working with our experts as well. So, I would say for aquaculture, the work started in 2008 but it became more prominent around 2016 or 2015 when we were doing an environment and social impact assessment. That is when we started rolling out to the public and we were able to get some feedback from them. We had a lot of opposition in 2016 when we were doing the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA). It was an election year so there was a lot of tension around switching from fisheries to aquaculture. We had a lot of work to prove that it is not about leaving fisheries along, it is about diversifying the entire opportunity for the economy of Seychelles. Now we are seeing that we are getting a lot of support and we are also seeing a lot of people venturing into aquaculture-applying to invest in aquaculture, which we did not expect because the majority of the applicants are coming from the local community rather than international ones.
Seychelles NATION: Give us a list of some of the projects that are currently happening in Seychelles by Seychellois and by expatriates?
Mr Lesperance: We have only one person that has fully filled out his business plan. That project wants to target sea cucumbers for exportation and we have a lot of information about the various species, so the promoter wants to venture into the farming of sea cucumbers, processing it and then exporting it to the south East Asian market. Which is something that we have been trying to promote, even in the documents that we have online because it is high value species. We have been trying to promote high value species rather than low value so that they can reap maximum benefit from it.
The other project that has been talked about a lot is the prawn farm on Coetivy. It was one of the species that we were promoting because we believe that we can produce our own prawns. Well, at least a good portion of the production can come locally because one of the objectives of the policy is to do import substitution. So, for that project IDC is still preparing their documents for the application process. They still have a couple of months ahead for them to submit their full business plan. We also have several NGOs that have been doing a lot of coral restoration because as part of our regulation and the fisheries act. Any organisms coming from the sea is covered under the fisheries act so they have been preparing their business plan and also applying for their licenses to allow them to conduct this activity.
We also have some initiatives that are targeting fin fish. When I say fin fish, I mean other snapper species than Bourgeois. There are also people who want to venture into ornamentals for aquarium purposes, which also includes some of the fin fish species. It is a little bit more delicate because you need to have very tight control over the hatchery and nursery phase. It involves a lot of scientific processes and you need to know how to make sure that you have good survival after fertilisation and hatching. We have been getting eggs and managed to fertilise them but they do not survive past three days. We do not have a post-natal facility for the small larvae. We need a proper hatchery which is inside and can control the necessary parameters. This is currently being reassessed and we are confident that we are now getting to a point where SFA and the government understand why we need to have these infrastructure in place to help, especially the small and medium scale operators because not all operators want to do the full value chain.
Seychelles NATION: What are the procedures for a Seychellois who is considering aquaculture for a living?
Mr Lesperance: If you want to invest in aquaculture, first of all we invite everyone to have a dialogue with us because if you have the capital and you want to invest, you need to get the right advice from the beginning. I always tell investors you need to get that technical information right. As SFA, we can advise but we cannot go too in depth because we have to evaluate the business plan that comes in. What we do is we try to match make as well to point you to the right direction. Once you get that initial formula right then you can move on to the next stage which is to come up with a concept. How much you are going to produce. Where you are going to sell it. This is very important; you need to have a market. We are trying to avoid and reduce the risk of people investing and not being successful. Planning in aquaculture is very essential. You cannot just put something together and go into it. You need to get the few steps at the beginning right and then we will advise you how to proceed.
Seychelles NATION: What is the capital we are looking at?
Mr Lesperance: We have not seen a lot of specific products from the private commercial banks. There are none that are specific towards aquaculture. It is new. We tried to approach the association a couple of years back but I think it was a bit premature before we launched the sector to try and explain to them. As we know, they focus a lot on risks so they will not give a loan without evaluating the risk so I guess it is a new avenue. What we have right now, SeyCCAT provides the small grants and what we advised some of the local applicants is to try to apply for SeyCCAT and do some research and also de-risk your concept. Once you have run a trial, which we usually support them technically, and you have proven that your concept works and is successful, then you can scale up and take a loan from the Blue Investment Fund which is being managed by the Development Bank of Seychelles (DBS). It goes up to three million dollars, so it allows for some of the capital expenditure to be accessed through that loan.
The problem we are having is that some of the local investors are actually thinking even bigger because they are partnering with international companies. The co-funding that they want as a joint venture, the amount that is available is too small. We have had a few discussions with the World Bank, which provides these facilities through DBS, and we are trying to see how best we can make sure to accommodate for that. So, either increase the amount or maybe allow them to have some form of mechanism for them to take larger loans because there are individuals that want to go much bigger and the products that we are having now are not suitable for them. We are working on it though, and they do have other options because Seychelles is a member of other banks like the African development Bank so there are other opportunities outside but a lot of the investors are currently looking for what we have locally. The discussions are still ongoing along that line.
Seychelles NATION: What are the foreign investments in Seychelles right now and what is being offered to attract them?
Mr Lesperance: There is a lot of interest around the larger scale farming like three thousand tonnes or more and a lot of them are focusing on fin fish, primarily species like Bourgeois and some high value snappers that they want to grow very far off shore, like twenty or thirty kilometres off shore. Out there they can produce larger amounts; the sea is deeper and the environment can enable a much larger production.
We do have a few of them that are interested in farming seaweed at a larger production. Back then, we did not really cater for seaweed because the seaweed species that were known ten years ago were all exotic to Seychelles. The ones that were being commercially produced over the world were seaweed species that were not found locally, and our policy prevents us from introducing exotic species so we did not even bother to include it in our framework. Now, ten years later, we see that they are targeting species that are found locally because there are new technologies. Some of them want to extract nutrients and products from those seaweeds that you can use in cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry. We are trying to adjust our policy and framework to make sure that we cater for even those species that we have not targeted back then. What we are doing now is we are comparing our incentives as a country to that of other countries. Seychelles has the natural strategic advantage of being a politically stable country. We have a very educated workforce, although it is a bit of an issue in terms of number and volume, but we do sell Seychelles along that vision to the foreign investors.
Seychelles NATION: Tell us about the pearl culture here that falls under aquaculture.
Mr Lesperance: The pearl culture that we have is on Praslin. They are actually farming black pearl oysters, which produces black pearls. It is owned by a small Norwegian family business. They have been here for over twenty to twenty-five years if I am not mistaken. The technique that they are using they are farming out at sea. What they do is they put out a rope for a couple of months, between Curieuse and Praslin because they do have a concession there where they can grow pearls. The oysters floating about in the water settle on the rope and start growing bigger, then they can be removed and be put in little cages. Oysters do not need to be fed, they just open up and filter the water to capture small microalgae they use as food. Once they get to a certain size, they are brought ashore and a technician is brought in from Japan. This process goes for two to three years before you have pearl inside the oyster.
It is a very expensive and lucrative business. We have actually worked through that and have seen that there are potentials on other islands, especially outer islands. Currently there are no Seychellois that are targeting pearl farming. We have had international interests. Earlier this year we had one from Fiji, they are currently investigating the potential of having it here because they want to do a dual investment. They want to invest in Seychelles and Mauritius, so we were helping them to see if it is possible to have the hatchery in Mauritius and also send the baby oysters here to Seychelles. One of our disadvantages is the land. It restricts the number of investments, because a lot of the investors they want to come closer to the mainland since it is easier for transportation and logistics. We are working to see if this oyster farming proposal is feasible.
Seychelles NATION: Is it possible for an individual to experiment aquaculture at home level?
Mr Lesperance: In our license framework we do have an experimental-pilot scale license available. It is the cheapest licence as well. We advise a lot of entrepreneurs when they start to go for that license first. It only gives you a maximum amount that you can produce but you do not have any minimum amount. You can produce up to two hundred tonnes a year, which is a lot. If somebody wants to do that, they can. But if you want to do it at home, here in Seychelles we are promoting mostly marine aquaculture because we know we do not have a lot of fresh water sources and we are trying to not promote fresh water aquaculture because it might come into conflict with water sources. We do get a few small investors that are interested in fresh water aquaculture. We were talking to the department of environment; we want to promote restorative aquaculture in fresh water. We are actually going to put in our new policy that we want to encourage restorative aquaculture when it comes to fresh water.
Seychelles NATION: What is the message from your department?
Mr Lesperance: Our message to them is to please come forward if you have ideas and you want to diversify and invest. Private companies that want to diversify their portfolios, please come. They can also visit our website and get any information on there.
Source: Seychelles Nation
