Laboratory bred prawns from Narakkal cultured in salt pan reservoirs at Tuticorin—a success story.

Abstract

Rapid developments and fast changes are taking place in the field of prawn culture in india and abroad. Domestication of the culturable species of marine prawns, their induced maturation and spawning in captivity and mass production of stockable size of prawn seeds have become a reality in india chiefly due to the researches conducted at the narakkal prawn culture laboratory (npcl) of the central marinefisheries research institute. Establishment of a land-based maturation facility and development ofMass cultures of locally available live feed organisms—diatoms, rotifers and cladocerans—were the major contributory factors in achieving this break-through. As a result of these developments over one million prawn seeds, chiefly belonging to the indian prawn penaeus indicus were produced at the npcl in the eariy half of 1980.the prawn seeds produced at the npcl were byproducts of the experiments conducted there and not products of a concerted production programme. Although most of these seeds were used in the lab to land programme of the institute at the vypeen island and quilon, some were supplied to the prawn culturists at goa and tuticorin and also to the calicut research. Centre of the cmfri for experiments in the polythene lined ponds on the sandy beach of calicut. The main objective of these supplies was to study the problems associated with long distance transport and to evaluate their growth and survival in different ecological conditions.