Indian Council of Agricutlural Research-Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute (ICAR-CIFRI), Barrackpore, Kolkata is ready to provide technical knowledge on enclosure fish culture technologies for the benefit of wetland fishers of Manipur.
Director Dr BK Das of ICAR-CIFRI said this while speaking at the on-field training programme on ‘Pen aquaculture technology in floodplain wetlands of Manipur’ at Sendra near Moirang town in Manipur’s Bishnupur district on Tuesday.
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The training programme attended by around 50 fishers, was conducted by ICAR-CIFRI in collaboration with fisheries department to train fishers on various aspect of pen aquaculture technology that has immense potential for improving income and livelihoods of wetland fishers.
Director Dr Das said that ICAR-CIFRI has collaborated with state fisheries department to implement pen aquaculture under the National Mission on Himalayan Studies at Takmu area of Loktak Lake with the main objective of enhancing income through culturing fish in such enclosures installed in the lake.
Urging the fishers to join hands with ICAR-CIFRI in successfully implementing the project, so that benefits accrued are shared by the fishers themselves, he however emphasized that after one year of the project, fishers have to continue with pen aquaculture using their own savings.
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Participating in the training programme,the principal scientist Dr AK Das who is in charge of taining-extension cell requested all the fisher participants to take full advantage of pen aquaculture technology which can be adopted in parts of Loktak Lake for producing higher quantities of fish per unit water area.
Dr Sona Yengkokpam discussed about the technical aspects of enclosure fish culture including pen installation, macrophyte clearance, which species to stock and how many to stock per unit area. She emphasized that pens are a low-cost technology and if practiced following scientific guidelines can improve income of the fishers.
Manipur has around 30,171 ha of natural lakes and floodplain wetlands that are largely unexploited and have high potential for increasing fish production through enclosure culture technologies.