About Info Akuakultur

Info Akuakultur

Info Akuakultur is an Indonesian monthly magazine covering marine and fisheries agribusiness, described in Indonesian as agribisnis kelautan dan perikanan. Based in Jakarta and published in Indonesian, it addresses the business of raising, managing and selling aquatic animals and other fisheries products, together with the technical, environmental and market questions that shape that business. Its tagline is "Untuk Kemajuan Perikanan Budidaya", which means For the Advancement of Aquaculture. That tagline states a purpose rather than merely a topic: the magazine presents itself as a publication intended to help aquaculture progress.

The scope implied by marine and fisheries agribusiness is broad. It includes freshwater, brackish-water and marine farming; it includes well-known farmed fish, high-value marine species and shrimp; and it includes the practical decisions that determine whether a farm succeeds, from choosing a site and managing a pond to preventing harvest failure and understanding disease. Info Akuakultur's documented content reflects that breadth, moving between shrimp, eel, catfish, pomfret, grouper and lobster, and between farm-level technique and wider questions of regulation, export prospects and climate change. As a monthly title, it has been able to return to those subjects regularly and to build, edition by edition, a record of Indonesian aquaculture in practice.

Launch and first issue

The first issue of Info Akuakultur appeared in February 2015. Its launch was announced through Infovet, the livestock and animal health magazine published by the same publisher. Announcing the new title through an established sister magazine was a logical introduction: Infovet already reached readers in Indonesian agribusiness, and Info Akuakultur extended a similar specialist publishing approach from land-based livestock to marine and fisheries production. Readers who knew the publisher's work in livestock could therefore understand the new magazine as a counterpart for aquaculture, rather than as an unrelated start-up.

The choice of February 2015 as the starting point matters for understanding the magazine's later edition numbers. A monthly magazine beginning in that month and continuing without a break accumulates editions at a predictable rate, reaching its hundredth edition and beyond within its first decade. The documented editions discussed later in this profile confirm that trajectory. Info Akuakultur did not remain a short-lived experiment launched alongside a larger title; it became a continuing monthly publication in its own right, with its own tagline, subject identity and programme of events.

Publisher and sister magazine

Info Akuakultur is published by PT Gallus Indonesia Utama, the same publisher as Infovet. That shared publisher, often known by the abbreviation GITA, links the two magazines institutionally even though their subject matter differs. Infovet is the livestock and animal health magazine, while Info Akuakultur turns the focus to kelautan dan perikanan — the marine and fisheries world. Together they give the publisher a presence across two major branches of Indonesian food-producing agribusiness: animals raised on land and animals raised in water.

The publisher's wider setting also helps explain how the aquaculture magazine operates. PT Gallus Indonesia Utama holds its annual meeting at the ASOHI building in Jakarta, and its January 2025 annual meeting was themed on optimising resources and succeeding in the digital era. That theme is relevant to a magazine that publishes in print, online and digital forms. Optimising resources and succeeding in a digital era are organisational concerns for the publisher as a whole, and for a monthly specialist title they point to the need to sustain regular print publication while also making editions and information available through digital channels.

Being part of the same publishing house as Infovet also gives Info Akuakultur a ready model for combining a magazine with events and discussion. Just as its sister title is associated with seminars and webinars for its readers, Info Akuakultur has developed its own discussion format for the aquaculture community, most notably the Bincang Akuakultur webinar series. The shared publisher therefore provides more than an imprint on the masthead; it provides a shared way of working in which publishing and convening the sector go together.

Leadership and management

The editor-in-chief of Info Akuakultur is Ir. Bambang Suharno, the same editor as Infovet and the president director of the publisher, PT Gallus Indonesia Utama. That combination of roles creates continuity across the two magazines. The person leading the publisher at company level also leads both titles editorially, so the aquaculture magazine's direction is set within the same leadership framework as the livestock magazine from which its launch was announced.

Ir. Darmanung Siswantoro has served as manager of Info Akuakultur alongside Infovet. Shared management reinforces the sister-magazine relationship at the operational level. Editorial leadership and day-to-day management both cross the boundary between the two publications, while their content remains distinct: one centred on livestock and animal health, the other on marine and fisheries agribusiness. For contributors, event partners and readers, that arrangement presents Info Akuakultur as part of a stable publishing group, with recognisable people responsible for both titles.

This leadership structure also helps explain the consistency of the monthly run. A magazine that appears every month for more than a decade requires sustained editorial coordination, production management and relationships with the sector it covers. Having an editor-in-chief who is also the publisher's president director, and a manager who serves across both magazines, gives Info Akuakultur an organisational base designed for continuity rather than for a single launch or a short series of special issues.

Editions, formats and the monthly run

Info Akuakultur publishes print, online and digital editions. Its website promotes digital subscriptions whose pages match the print edition. That detail is important for readers who move between formats: a digital subscriber is offered the same paginated magazine as the print reader, preserving the identity of each numbered edition while making it accessible without a physical copy. In a sector whose participants may be based at farms, ponds and coastal centres far from Jakarta, a digital edition matching the print edition offers a practical route to the same content.

Two documented editions illustrate the length and regularity of the run. No. 109, Year X, was the February 2024 edition. No. 126, Year XI, was the July 2025 edition. Those numbers show an unbroken monthly run past 100 editions, extending from the first issue in February 2015 through the tenth and eleventh years of publication. The numbering and the year designations move together in the way expected of a monthly magazine that has maintained its schedule: by February 2024 it had passed one hundred editions, and by July 2025 it had reached edition 126.

Maintaining a monthly schedule past 100 editions is a substantial publishing commitment in a specialist field. Each edition requires new material relevant to working aquaculture — farm practices, commodities, diseases, markets, regulation and events — and the documented content of the magazine shows editors drawing that material from across Indonesian aquaculture, from shrimp ponds and tarpaulin catfish ponds to grouper farming in Bali and a national mariculture conference in 2025.

Coverage of farmed species and commodities

The content documented on Info Akuakultur's site shows a wide range of species and production systems. Shrimp farming is a major theme, including the AHPND disease problem, site selection strategy for shrimp farms and harvest-failure prevention in ponds. Shrimp therefore appear in the magazine not as a single topic but as a production system with several distinct challenges: disease, location and the risk of losing a harvest. Treating those challenges separately allows the magazine to address both biological risks and management decisions.

Fish farming coverage includes catfish farming in tarpaulin ponds, a production method whose name identifies the pond type at the centre of the practice. It also includes bawal bintang, or silver pomfret, presented as a high-value marine commodity, and grouper farming in Bali. The contrast between those subjects is instructive. Catfish in tarpaulin ponds represent a pond-based farming subject, silver pomfret represent value in a marine commodity, and grouper farming in Bali ties a species to a specific place and its farming community. Together they show the magazine ranging across different aquaculture contexts rather than limiting itself to one environment.

Eel, known in Indonesian as sidat, are covered through their export prospects to Japan, Taiwan and Europe. That subject shifts the focus from production technique to markets beyond Indonesia, asking where a farmed product might be sold and which overseas destinations matter. Lobster, by contrast, are covered through resource regulation, a subject concerned with the rules governing the resource itself. By placing export prospects and regulation alongside pond technique and disease, Info Akuakultur reflects the full commercial reality of aquaculture: a farmer must raise an animal successfully, but must also operate within regulations and find a market that values the result.

Disease, site selection and harvest risk

Some of the most practical themes in the magazine's documented content concern risk. AHPND in shrimp is identified as a disease problem in shrimp farming, and it recurs as a subject in the magazine's webinar activity as well as its site content. Harvest-failure prevention in ponds addresses the outcome every farmer seeks to avoid: reaching the end of a production cycle without a successful harvest. Site selection strategy for shrimp farms addresses risk at the opposite end of the cycle, before production begins, when the choice of location can shape everything that follows.

Considered together, those three subjects form a logical sequence for thinking about a shrimp farm or a pond enterprise. First, choose the site with care. Then manage the operation with attention to disease problems such as AHPND. Throughout, act to prevent harvest failure. Info Akuakultur's coverage therefore does more than report individual commodities; it follows the decision points at which aquaculture businesses succeed or fail. That practical orientation is consistent with its tagline, For the Advancement of Aquaculture, because advancement in a farming sector depends heavily on reducing avoidable losses and making better decisions at each stage of production.

Bincang Akuakultur webinars

Info Akuakultur runs a webinar series called "Bincang Akuakultur", meaning Aquaculture Talk, in partnership with the fisheries platform Minapoli. The series extends the magazine beyond its editions and into live discussion, allowing participants to hear speakers and engage with a current problem in real time. One session focused on AHPND in shrimp and drew more than 80 participants from government, the private sector, farmers, associations and academics. That mix of participants is significant: a disease problem in shrimp farming affects producers directly, but it also concerns companies, researchers, associations and public authorities, and the session brought those groups into the same discussion.

The speakers for the AHPND session included Dr. Heny Budi Utari of PT Central Proteina Prima, shrimp-disease expert Sidrotun Naim, Hardi Pitoyo of Shrimp Club Indonesia, and Ir. Maskur of the Indonesia Network on Fish Health Management. Those affiliations span a company, specialist disease expertise, a shrimp organisation in Shrimp Club Indonesia, and a fish health management network. Listing them together shows the magazine using its convening role to assemble different kinds of knowledge around one problem, rather than presenting a single viewpoint. For a magazine whose content already addressed AHPND, the webinar added a forum in which the subject could be discussed by practitioners and experts with an audience drawn from across the sector.

Climate change and conference coverage

Info Akuakultur also co-organised a Tropical Aquaculture Innovation Conference webinar with the association Himperindo on climate-change impacts on tropical aquaculture. That event drew more than 140 participants, a larger audience than the documented AHPND session, and its speakers included the head of BPPT, Hammam Riza. Climate change gives tropical aquaculture a long-term challenge that sits above any single farm or species: conditions in which aquatic animals are raised can shift, and a sector built around water and pond or marine environments must consider how to respond. A webinar on innovation in that context connects the magazine's practical farm coverage with a strategic question about the future of the whole field.

The magazine's July 2025 edition, No. 126, Year XI, gave special coverage — Liputan Khusus — to the Indonesia Mariculture Conference, or IMC, 2025. Special coverage in its own edition allowed Info Akuakultur to report the conference for readers who follow marine aquaculture, and to record voices from within that community. The coverage reported Mizab Asdary of the Situbondo brackish-water aquaculture centre and Hendra, owner of Berkah Kerapu Bali. Those two voices represent different positions in the sector: a brackish-water aquaculture centre in Situbondo and a Bali grouper business owner. Including both in conference reporting reflects the magazine's habit of moving between institutions and working producers, a pattern also visible in its species coverage and its webinar audiences.

Mariculture — marine aquaculture — is a natural focus for many of the magazine's themes. Silver pomfret as a high-value marine commodity, grouper farming in Bali, lobster resource regulation and a national conference devoted to mariculture all belong to the marine side of its remit, while shrimp ponds, catfish and eel show that the remit is wider than the sea alone. By giving the Indonesia Mariculture Conference special coverage in July 2025, Info Akuakultur placed itself as a chronicler of the sector's own gatherings, as well as a publisher of technical and business guidance.

Role within Indonesian aquaculture publishing

From its first issue in February 2015 to edition 126 in July 2025, Info Akuakultur has established a clear role: a Jakarta-based, Indonesian-language monthly that treats aquaculture as agribusiness. That means it covers animals and production systems, but also export destinations such as Japan, Taiwan and Europe for eel, regulation for lobster, disease management for shrimp, site selection and harvest risk for pond farmers, and climate change for tropical aquaculture as a whole. Its print, online and digital editions carry that coverage in matching forms, its webinars bring government, companies, farmers, associations and academics together, and its special conference coverage records the sector speaking to itself.

Its relationship with Infovet and PT Gallus Indonesia Utama remains part of that identity. It was announced through Infovet, shares Infovet's editor-in-chief Ir. Bambang Suharno and manager Ir. Darmanung Siswantoro, and is published by the same company whose annual meeting at the ASOHI building in Jakarta in January 2025 looked toward optimising resources and succeeding in the digital era. Yet Info Akuakultur has its own tagline, its own subject and its own community of shrimp farmers, fish farmers, mariculture businesses, health specialists and researchers. In following that community month after month past 100 editions, the magazine has made its tagline a description of its work: publishing for the advancement of aquaculture.