Mariculture – An Option for Meeting Our Growing Seafood Demand: Part III
The world’s oceans have been fished nearly to the limits of their sustainable yields. With the current state of fisheries, additional production of seafood will have to come mainly from aquaculture. In recent times, mariculture has got a tremendous boost globally owing to technological developments in the field of cage culture and related areas in Norway, other Scandinavian countries, Chile, Japan and Australia. The Norwegian technology has helped countries like Chile to make tremendous foray in the field within a short period of ten years.
Read more about mariculture, a specialized branch of aquaculture involving the cultivation of marine organisms, in this multi-part series.
Commercial mariculture: The only attempt at cage culture in India has been made by two entrepreneurs from Chennai and Kochi, who had started their units for groupers and seabass farming respectively in Andaman waters. However, at present these units are not functional owing to various reasons discussed as under.
M/s Shilpi Aquaculture Limited, Cochin during 1994 had surveyed suitable site for cage culture and established the nursery at Burmanllah village. Shilpi aquaculture initially ventured for culture of exotic species Sparus auratus (Gilthead Sea Bream). Due to objection on the ground of introduction of exotic species, the firm was not allowed to take up the culture of Sparus auratus. However, culture of hatchery reared seabass Lates calcarifer has been accepted by the administration in principle.
It has not been possible to ground the project so far as the environmental clearance from the ministry is still awaited. Since considerable investment has been made by the company and the physical facilities in the form of a state-of-the-art hatchery has been created, the possibility of financial restructuring of the project subject to the above clearances may merit consideration.
Considering the fact that this was the first major attempt to start marine cage culture, and that the maiden success could lead to opening up of the sector, the project may be monitored closely and necessary conditions created for its implementation if otherwise found feasible.
M/s Samudira Marine Farms had also started a project of cage culture on grouper but did not establish the hatchery as per the project. The firm instead of culturing the groupers had resorted to purchase and export of groupers from local fishermen, which was against their project proposal and hence, the A&N administration did not favour the firm to continue the same practice. This project was financed by Vijaya Bank and refinanced by NABARD. The original project site was Junglee Ghat with stations at Mayabunder, Dighlipur and Havlok. The promoter lives in Chennai and at present there is no operation. However, one caretakers is stationed at Havlock. The cage raft for 12 cages was moored in Havlock Bay when visited in May 2001. It is understood that the project would be revived on receiving necessary clearance from the authorities.
Past attempts at launching of cage fish culture of fin-fishes has better prepared the department of fisheries, Govt. of A&N to deal with planning for this sector. The department has broadly identified the costal areas and the open sea areas suitable for such mariculture activities based on preliminary observations. Each 25 m2 cage unit can yield 500-600 kg. of cultivated fish in 7-8 months period. While not much information is available on the distribution and availability of juveniles in natural habitats, hatchery seed production technology is available and the same can be adopted. The technology of seabass farming in coastal ponds is being standardised at the Rajeev Gandhi Foundation of Aquaculture Research of the MPEDA with collaboration of the Department of Primary Industries, Govt. of Queensland, Australia. However, cage culture of finfishes being technology intensive, it may be necessary to go in for technology transfer from countries like Norway or Australia where the technology has been perfected.
Similar transfer of technology programmes are required pertaining aquaculture of groupers, snappers and other important species, the list of which is growing with the success of tuna rearing in Australia. The possibilities are enormous and ever increasing. The possibility of seabass and grouper culture may be explored in the first phase.
The need of financial assistance for commercial marine cage fish farming could be considerable taking into account the level of sophistication and capital outlay involved. The average project cost for a floating farm with 12000 M3 cage volume and annual production of 300 MT may be of the order of Rs. 7.0 Cr. Thus for a production of 100,000 MT, the investment cost may be of the order of Rs. 2500 Cr.
To be continued …
