Artemia cyst production in Russia

In Western Siberia (Russia) there are about 100 Artemia lakes with total area over 1 600 km(2). Geographically these lakes are located between 51A degrees-56A degrees N and 61A degrees-82A degrees E. In general these lakes are shallow (depth less than 1.5 m), small or medium size (0.1 to 10 km(2)); they are chloride; their total salinity is from 40 to 250 g/L. The harvesting of cysts per year is only in 20-40 lakes. In Russia 550 tons of dry Artemia cysts (14%-18% of the world production) were harvested annually. This includes about 350 tons in the Altai region and 200 tons in other regions. During our regular 20-year study period the cyst harvest was: 95 tons in Kurgan; 65 tons in Omsk, 20 tons in Novosibirsk, 20 tons in Tyumen. Ways of increasing cyst harvest in Russia are considered in this article. During the last 30 years the harvest of cysts in Russia has increased from 7-20 to 500-600 tons. A significant influence of dryness of the year was found on productivity in selected lakes, but taken for all the lakes together, the relationship was not significant. The optimal salinity for productivity of cysts in the lakes was determined. Analysis of productivity of the lakes and the harvesting results showed that the stocks of cysts are underutilized by approximately 1.7 times.