Aquaculture Management

About this book

This text shows how to increase the effectiveness of aquaculture operations across the board. Serving as both a field manual for professionals and a textbook for aquaculture students, it aims to cover all aspects of aquaculture - from production and management to marketing and ethical considerations. The author takes the reader step-by-step through site selection, planning, production, water quality management and aquatic health management. He stresses that aquacultural systems are made up of components that can each be assessed, managed, and mixed to increase productivity and maximize resource utilization. Also covered are the vital aspects of sound business and people management. Included are ready-to-use procedures for budgeting, record keeping, financial analysis, personnel management, and long-term planning, as well as insights on leadership, motivation, communication and performance evaluation.

Contents

Perspectives: principles of fish culture and aquaculture systems - definition, principles, and need for management; the culture system spectra; summary. Principles of culture systems management: management definitions and approaches; the job of management; management functions and activities; management styles and attributes of successful managers; scope of aquaculture management; bottom line; summary. Approaches to people (using human resources): contingency theory; management skills; productivity; summary. Marketing: introduction; functional and institutional aspects of marketing; performance; cooperatives; marketing studies and test marketing; strategies for cultured products; summary. Life cycles and production strategies: enterprises and the concept of mixing; energy flow; Summary. Water and health management: water management; health management. Ethics: business and government; environmental ethics - from management of scarce natural resources to commodity production for human consumption; professionalism and legislated ethics. Production economics: microeconomic principles; timid costs of ownership. Records for managerial analyses: record keeping; enterprise budgets; cash Flow; Financial statement; production system limits: capacity estimates; production capacity assessment (PCA). Decision-making tools: partial budgeting; the delphi technique; benefit-cost analysis; decision trees. Computer-assisted decision support systems: analytic hierarchy process; AHP decision analysis for procurement, installation, and use of oxygenation equipment; linear programming. Appendixes: manager attributes and expectations; suggested steps for learning to read people; examples of enterprise budgets, cash flow, and credit repayment schedules; life-cycle costing; sample calculation to determine the number of fish that can be reared in a unit (tank) that receives 5 gallons per minute (gpm) water flow; sample problems on production capacity assessment (PCA).

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