The All-India Shrimp Hatcheries’ Association has urged the Centre to set up multiplication centres to meet the excess demand for brood stock for shrimps and provide quality seed.

Steps should also be taken to regularise and regulate the unauthorised shrimp hatcheries, according to L Satyanarain (alias Tikku), President of All-India Shrimp Hatcheries’ Association .

“Otherwise, the whole industry will be affected and every one will suffer,” he said. Quality seed holds the key for sustainable shrimp culture.

Therefore, proliferation of hatcheries and production of seed without the requisite safeguards does not augur well for the industry, said Satyanarain.

Regulation needed In an interview here, he said the proliferation of shrimp hatcheries on the East Godavari coast in recent times in Thondangi and Uppada mandals was not a healthy trend as “the number of hatcheries has doubled from 60 to more than 120.”

However, the Coastal Aquaculture Authority of India (Chennai) is bringing them into the regulatory orbit and trying to bring the situation under control, he said.

Satyanarain said that the brood stock for the shrimp seed production was being imported from Florida and Hawaii through Chennai and supplied to the hatcheries. “The quarantine facilities in Chennai at present are sufficient to handle 2.5 lakh animals per annum only. With the mushrooming of hatcheries, more than 3 lakh seedlings would be required. It has led to a huge demand-supply gap,” he said.

To bridge the deficit, he said, some of the farmers as well as hatcheries were resorting to localised breeding and the quality of the seed was suffering as a result.

“Inbreeding leads to viral outbreak and even in Vannamei shrimp ponds there is a viral outbreak now. But it has not yet reached serious proportions, but it would, if no steps are taken now,” he said.

sarma.rs@thehindu.co.in

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