Micro-nurseries for bivalve seed production

Abstract

Along the southwest coast of India, mussel farming is practiced by thousands of farmers in the estuarine areas using rack and rope method or on-bottom method, during the post monsoon months. Production of farmed mussel after the peaking in 2009 (18400 t) has stagnated around 9000-10000 t per year. Large scale collection of seed from the natural mussel beds following increased adoption of green mussel farming has led to conflicts between wild mussel pickers and farmers in the past. Moreover, mussel and oyster farmers face an unpredictable wild seed supply and lack of dependable supply of quality seed from hatcheries. Vizhinjam Research Centre of ICAR-CMFRI has developed micro-nursery systems with down-welling and up-welling subsystems for the settlement and metamorphosis of floating larvae to spat and for further nursery rearing of green mussel spat to seed size suitable for farming. This will make large scale bivalve seed production of mussels, edible oyster, pearl oyster and clam possible in the hatchery which can cater to the requirements of thousands of bivalve farmers in coastal areas of India.