BOOK REVIEW

J. S. Lucas and P. C. Southgate (eds): Aquaculture—Farming aquatic animals and plants

Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2012, 2nd Edition, XVI + 629 pp,£75/€90 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-1-4051-8858-6

Malcolm Jobling

Received: 2 April 2012 / Accepted: 2 April 2012 / Published online: 21 April 2012� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

The writing of a course text in aquaculture is challenging. The challenges include finding a

good balance between theory and practice, maintaining breadth without compromising

depth, avoiding errors of omission, and ensuring that the book has an up-to-date content

that is not superseded shortly after publication. The authors of Aquaculture—Farmingaquatic animals and plants have done a commendable job, but the book does have

weaknesses and shortcomings. The dates for the aquaculture production figures probably

provide a good indication of when the various chapters were written; often, the most recent

production figures are from 2007. In some cases, this has had consequences for chapter

content, because the latest information about trends and innovations has not been included.

Thus, despite its merits, the book falls short of being a pandect, and it is not the cure-all

text for college and university courses in aquaculture.

The book comprises 26 chapters, roughly half of which are devoted to the foundations

upon which aquaculture is build, such as water quality, feeds and feeding, economics, and

marketing. Most of the remaining chapters describe the cultivation of species or species

groups. A few chapters do not fall neatly into either of these categories. For example, the

opening chapter defines aquaculture, provides a brief overview its history, gives some

production figures, and mentions a few recent trends, advances, and developments. There is

also a chapter devoted to describing environmental impacts of aquaculture. In a chapter

with the esoteric title Desert Aquaculture, there is heavy reliance on case studies, but the

authors also indicate the general applications of the information they present. The book

closes with a chapter that looks toward the future.

There are chapters that cover all of the topics that one would expect to find in a book

intended to be a course text. Readers are provided with information about site selection,

water quality and rearing systems, reproduction and growth, genetics, nutrition and

feeding, diseases and disease prevention, harvesting, processing, and aquaculture products,

economics, and marketing. Understandably, given the nature of the book, several of the

chapters are cursory, but they provide sufficient information about the basic principles. To

gain full benefit from the book, readers should have a sound grounding in, and a reasonably

M. Jobling (&)University of Tromsø, 9037 Tromsø, Norwaye-mail: Malcolm.jobling@uit.no

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Aquacult Int (2012) 20:807–809DOI 10.1007/s10499-012-9530-8

good working knowledge of, natural sciences. The text contains quite a lot of specialist

terms and jargon, and some authors include mathematical formulae in their chapters, so the

liberal use of line drawings, graphs, black-and-white photographs, and summary tables is a

plus. The inclusion of many illustrations and summary tables increases the likelihood that

readers will comprehend what has been written. Each chapter has a list of references that

can act as a guide to further reading. Unfortunately, authors have not always used the most

comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date sources of information.

In the descriptions of species, there is a preponderance of chapters that deal with the

cultivation of finfish; carps, channel catfish, salmonids, and tilapias are each given their

own chapter, and there is also one that deals with the farming of marine fish. Unfortu-

nately, in the chapter covering marine fish, many of the species portraits are so brief as to

be of limited value. Plants (algae) are restricted to a single chapter, and crustaceans and

molluscs are each allotted a couple of chapters; marine shrimp and other decapod crus-

taceans, and bivalves and gastropods, respectively. The chapter on gastropod molluscs

focuses on abalone culture. There is a chapter that covers the rearing of soft-shell turtles,

and there is also a catch-all chapter that deals with ornamental species. Trade in aquatic

ornamental species runs to several billion dollars. Recently, there has been a distinct trend

towards increased captive-breeding and rearing of aquarium fish and other ornamental

species and a reduced reliance on animals taken from the wild. Given this, it is timely and

fitting that a chapter on ornamental species has been included in the book.

Overall, the coverage of the farmed species varies quite widely in the amount of detail

given. Coverage is also selective, so readers may wonder: Why a chapter on channel

catfish, rather catfishes generally: where are Pangasius and African catfish? Why wasn’t

more written about farming of Pacific salmon for stocking and sea ranching? Why doesn’t

the coverage of marine fish culture concentrate on a few of the most commercially

important species from different geographic regions? Isn’t the giant freshwater prawn,

Macrobrachium, sufficiently important to deserve more than a few pages? Readers may

also feel that the non-uniform presentation and organization of chapters, coupled to the

variety of writing styles, is a drawback, albeit not a major one. Slightly more problematic is

the fact that several of the black-and-white photographs do not illustrate the points raised in

the text, and the same can be said about a few of the line diagrams. An additional minus is

that some of the chapters end rather abruptly, without any summarizing closing statements

or concluding remarks.

The editors, John Lucas and Paul Southgate, have written a few of the chapters, but they

have been very reliant upon the efforts of co-authors, and there are almost 40 contributing

authors in total. This has resulted in some uneven depth of coverage of topics and

duplication in the presentation of some material, for example, information about feeds and

feeding. In addition, as mentioned above, there is a lack of uniformity of style, and several

chapters lack concluding summaries, and I also found some of the cross-referencing to be a

bit irritating. All of this meant that I felt that the general organization was not ideal and was

left with the impression that the editing had not been a complete success. It was, for

example, rather puzzling that a chapter covering the immune system, vaccination, and

disease prevention (Chapter 19) should appear in the midst of the chapters describing the

cultivation methods for the species groups (Chapters 13–25, with the exception of Chap-

ter 19). The order of presentation of the cultivated species chapters also seemed to me to be

somewhat haphazard. I could not see a logical sequence based on species classification and

systematics, nor could I see that the chapter order was based upon production figures and

economic returns. Other presentation problems relate to some potentially confusing use of

footnotes, variable use of text citations, and inconsistent formatting of the reference lists.

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There are several typographical errors, including some in graphs and tables, there are a few

dubious, confusing, and discrepant statements of fact, and the book also contains one or

two ‘howlers’. For example, the statement that there are about 1,600 species in the family

Cyprinidae (Chapter 14) seems to be a gross underestimate, with the total given in

Chapter 25 being much higher, at over 2,000, and Nelson (2006) gives 2,420 species for

the family. In addition, some of the information about production and relative importance

of the different carps given in the text of Chapter 14 does not agree with that presented in

Table 14.1. Another example of an avoidable error occurs in Figure 2.9, which shows a

cage of Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, not Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar.Aquaculture—Farming aquatic animals and plants is a book that gives many useful

insights into this diverse field, but coverage is uneven and selective; depth has sometimes

been sacrificed to maintain breadth. This means that most college and university lecturers

will feel the need to supplement the book with additional sources to meet the requirements

of their students. For example, college and university lecturers in Mediterranean countries

would probably want their students to have in-depth knowledge about the techniques used

to farm sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and sea bream (Sparus aurata). The farming of

these fishes is not described in detail in the book; although sea bass and sea bream are

mentioned several times, the information is not collated and consolidated, but is spread

across a number of chapters. Similarly, those who have a strong focus on aquaculture

technology in their teaching may find the book to be deficient in its coverage. Finally, those

who are particularly interested in the application of modern biotechnology to aquaculture,

animal welfare, biosecurity, product tracking (traceability), and quality assurance may feel

that Aquaculture—Farming aquatic animals and plants whets their appetite, but contains

insufficient information to quench their thirst.

Reference

Nelson JS (2006) Fishes of the world. Wiley, Hoboken

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