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Fishing is one of the major economic activities in the coastal district
of Uttara Kannada. Amongst all the fishing activities, prawn fishing takes
the pride of place as it has a lucrative export market. Consequently prawn
fishing in open sea waters has developed over the years to such an extent
that problems of overfishing have now begun to crop up. On the contrary,
prawn culture in brackishwater areas of the district is hardly practised.
The reasons for under utilization of the brackishwater areas are (a) inadequate
development of intensive culture technology and poor adaptation to the local
conditions of the district, (b) Non-availability in large numbers of commercially
important prawn seedling and (c) the socio-economic conditions of the farmers
and sheer ignorance of available intensive culture technology. The land
holding in the brackishwater area is small and fragmented whereas, traditional
culture practices require large water areas. The solution therefore lies
in the large scale production of prawn seeds under controlled conditions
and rearing of desired species. Though the basic know how for intensive
prawn culture is available, no attempt has been made to evolve a locale
specific optimal technology package that can easily be used by farmers. |