SANTO DOMINGO.- Tilapia, bass, trout and a host of other fresh water fish varieties are increasingly finding their way into the palates of South and North Americans, but not in Dominican Republic, where a limited number people in some areas of the country look for the delicacy.

The increase in the raising of tilapia has become better known in the last years and at the close of 2005 exports from countries such as Panama to the United States posted figures surpassing $1.5 million, equaling 12 million pounds.

Tilapia, together with other fresh water species such as shrimp and crawfish are now being industrially harvested in tanks around this country, with much of the production reserved for the tourism and export sectors.

In Panama, Reinaldo Morales, of the Aquiculture Ministry, affirmed that his country’s 2005 tilapia exports surpassed the figures in 2004, year in which that variety’s exports reached $900,000, equal to 8 million pounds.

Just to October last year, the United States National Marine Fisheries Service posted $1,470,066 in purchases of Panamanian fresh tilapia fillets and frozen tilapia. For the same period in 2004 this product’s export value to the United States was $813,997.

This freshwater fish, with its white but simple flesh, has little by little become the delight of the Americans’ palate, which increasingly demands not just quantity, but also price.

Locally, in places such as Lago Enriquillo, in the South, and Tavera and Rincon dams, near La Vega, Cibao, a pound of lake tilapia sells for RD$40 per pound, whereas the more exclusive bass can fetch up to RD$80 per pound.

And internationally funded entities such as the CIMPA, in Santiago, together with the Institute of Superior Agriculture (ISA), the raising of tilapia industrially has provided a steady supply to the country’s supermarkets, where its sells for about RD$30 per pound.