Aqua Fisheries Aquaculture LLC · Dalma Island, Abu Dhabi
AQUAFAQ is building a complete marine aquaculture chain on Dalma Island: a hatchery, a feed mill, offshore cages in the Arabian Gulf, and a processing plant — so seed, feed, grow-out and harvest sit on one Abu Dhabi lease.
The company
Aqua Fisheries Aquaculture LLC — AQUAFAQ — was established in 2020 to put marine aquaculture on Dalma Island, west of Abu Dhabi city. The public plan is not a single pen. It is a chain.
Onshore, 156,118 square metres hold the hatchery, the feed mill and processing. Offshore, 250,000 square metres of Gulf water are for floating cages. Juveniles are meant to leave the nursery for those cages; feed is meant to be mixed beside them; harvest is meant to be chilled and prepared on the same island.
Design capacities are 40 million juveniles a year, 60,000 tonnes of feed, and 20,000 tonnes each for the cages and for processing. Those figures describe the size of the system being built. They are not a claim of fish already landed.
Later, once the finfish chain is in place, shrimp in recirculating water and mud crab in a vertical system are each planned at 5,000 tonnes.
The four plants
Hatchery, mill, cages, processing. Capacities below are design figures stored in the company desk — change a plant there, and this page follows.
01Broodstock, eggs, larvae and juveniles — seed for the cages, raised onshore.
Open the process
02Pellets mixed on Dalma, sized so feed is not the constraint on the cages.
Open the process
03Floating circular cages in 250,000 m² of Arabian Gulf water.
Open the process
04Harvest, chill and prepare on the same island as the cages.
Open the processBroodstock, eggs, larvae and juveniles — seed for the cages, raised onshore.
Open the process0juveniles a yearPellets mixed on Dalma, sized so feed is not the constraint on the cages.
Open the process0tonnesFloating circular cages in 250,000 m² of Arabian Gulf water.
Open the process0tonnesHarvest, chill and prepare on the same island as the cages.
Open the process0tonnesDesign mix
Bar length follows the live capacity stored for each plant. Change a figure in the desk, and the mix moves.
Cultivation
Aquaculture is a water crop. On Dalma the sequence is the same as anywhere it is done well: broodstock and eggs onshore, live feed then dry pellets, grow-out in open cages, then kill, bleed, chill and pack. Open each step.
Cultivation begins before the cage. Broodstock are held onshore. Eggs are incubated in conical tanks, where a slow upwelling of water keeps them suspended until they hatch. This is the hatchery’s first job: turn a fertile egg into a larva that can feed.
Newly hatched larvae are too small for dry feed. They take live food — rotifers, then brine shrimp — in round tanks with filtered, warmed, aerated water. As they grow they become fry, then fingerlings: juveniles stout enough to leave the nursery for the sea. AQUAFAQ’s hatchery is drawn for 40 million of those juveniles a year, so the cages are not waiting on imported seed.
Grow-out fish eat compressed pellets: protein, oil, starch, vitamins, sized to the mouth of the animal. Automatic feeders dose those pellets into tanks and, later, into cages, so the ration is measured rather than dumped. The mill on Dalma is sized at 60,000 tonnes a year — three times the cage capacity — so feed is meant to sit ahead of the crop, not behind it.
Juveniles are transferred into floating circular cages: a ring of HDPE pipe, a net hanging in the water column, a walkway for feeding and inspection. The fish live in real seawater, with current, oxygen and the temperature of the Gulf. The offshore lease at Dalma is 250,000 square metres. Design capacity of the cages is 20,000 tonnes. That is grow-out: the long middle of cultivation, from fingerling to harvest size.
Aquaculture is not agriculture with a different animal. The medium is water. Density, dissolved oxygen, salinity, ammonia and temperature decide whether fish grow or fail. In cages the Gulf does most of that work. In the hatchery, and later in shrimp RAS, the same work is done by pumps, filters and sensors. Health is daily: a slow feeder, a diver, a lab reading — not a harvest-day inspection.
When the fish reach harvest weight they are taken from the cage, killed humanely, bled and put on ice. Processing on the same island — gutting, filleting, freezing, packing — keeps the chain short and the origin simple to state: Dalma. The plant is matched to the cages at 20,000 tonnes. Shrimp and mud crab, later, follow the same rule: raise them here, prepare them here.
Dalma Island
Dalma lies in the Arabian Gulf, off the western coast of Abu Dhabi. The island already has a harbour, a road and a living town. The aquaculture lease uses that geography twice: open seawater for grow-out, and a compact onshore plot for hatchery tanks, a mill and a plant.
Coordinates published here are 24.50° N, 52.30° E. The offshore water is for circular floating cages. The onshore ground is for broodstock, larval rearing, feed manufacture, harvest intake and packing. A short crossing is the point of the design: seed does not travel a country, and a harvested fish does not travel a country, before it is prepared.
Why this platform
When the platform was defined, seafood consumption in the UAE was estimated at about 28.6 kilograms per person a year — among the highest rates in the world. National consumption was put near 226,000 tonnes a year. Capture fisheries supplied about 70,000 tonnes. Aquaculture supplied about 3,250 tonnes.
That gap is the public reason for an island chain: raise marine fish in Gulf water, with juveniles and feed made beside the cages, and process the harvest on Dalma. The figures below are the planning basis from that time. They are not a live market reading for this year.
These figures are the planning basis from when the platform was defined. They are not a live reading of this year's market.
Live figures
The public sequence
Aqua Fisheries Aquaculture LLC is established. AQUAFAQ is the name used in public.
156,118 m² onshore for hatchery, mill and plant. 250,000 m² offshore for Gulf cages.
Juveniles, feed, grow-out and processing are drawn as neighbours, not as four distant factories.
Eggs, live feed, pellets, cages, oxygen and ice — the crop is the water, not a harvest-day visit.
After finfish: 5,000 tonnes of shrimp in RAS, and 5,000 tonnes of mud crab in a vertical system.
After finfish
Two later plants sit behind the marine-fish chain. They are not an extra net on the same cage. They are different animals, different water, different buildings — each planned at 5,000 tonnes.
How we cultivate
Hatch, wean, feed, grow in the Gulf, harvest cold. Density, oxygen, salinity and feed ration decide the year — not a portrait of the company.
Juveniles are meant to come from the Dalma hatchery, so a cycle is not left waiting on a distant supplier.
The mill is part of the same site, and it is sized so feed is not the constraint on the cages.
Cages use the open Gulf. Shrimp, later, are planned in recirculating water, kept apart from the cages.
Veterinary care, fish health and measured feeding are part of how the hatchery and the cages are meant to be run.
Grow the fish and prepare them on one island, so the origin stays simple to state.
Questions
Short answers on AQUAFAQ, Dalma, cultivation and design capacity. The desk can add or edit every question.
AQUAFAQ is the public name of Aqua Fisheries Aquaculture LLC, established in 2020. It is an integrated marine aquaculture platform on Dalma Island, Abu Dhabi: hatchery, feed mill, sea cages and processing, with later shrimp and mud-crab plants planned behind that chain.
Dalma sits in the Arabian Gulf west of Abu Dhabi city, with harbour, road and town already there. The lease uses the island twice: 250,000 m² of open Gulf water for cages, and 156,118 m² onshore for tanks, mill and plant, so seed, feed and harvest do not travel a country.
No. Figures on this site are design capacities stored in the company desk: 40 million juveniles a year, 60,000 tonnes of feed, 20,000 tonnes of cages, 20,000 tonnes of processing, and 5,000 tonnes each for later shrimp and mud crab. They describe the size of the system being built, not fish already landed.
Broodstock and eggs onshore; larvae on live feed, then dry pellets; transfer to floating Gulf cages for grow-out; daily work on oxygen, density and ration; then humane kill, bleed, ice, and processing on the same island. That sequence is the cultivation page.
The mill is drawn at 60,000 tonnes against 20,000 tonnes of cages — three times, so feed sits ahead of the fish rather than behind them. If those two desk figures change, the public site recomputes the ratio.
The record
Notes on cultivation, capacity and Dalma. They can be edited from the company desk. They are not a newsroom.
Cultivation
The cultivation page is the company without a portrait: six steps that any well-run marine farm has to get right.
Cages
A circular cage is a ring, a net and a walkway. The medium is Arabian Gulf water on a 250,000 m² offshore lease.
Feed
60,000 tonnes of feed against 20,000 tonnes of cages is a design choice: the ration should wait for the fish, not the other way round.
Call +971 2 553 6357, or send a message. It is stored for the company. It is not published on this site.
