Cage Aquaculture in India

On 28^th January, 2022, Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, organized a webinar on “Cage Aquaculture in Reservoir: Sleeping Giants” as a part of “Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav”.

• Cage aquaculture is when fish are reared from fry to fingerling, fingerling to tablesize, or table size to marketable size while captive in an enclosed space that maintains the free exchange of water with the surrounding water body.

Impact/Significance: Cage culture is suitable to a wide range of open freshwater ecosystems. Its other advantageous features include:

• Efficient Exploitation: It efficiently exploits water bodies, tapping their natural productivity and thereby reducing pressure on other resources.
• Sustainable Method: It uses simple technology and locally available resources for cage construction and operation.
• High Output: Cage culture eliminates losses to predation and facilitates prophylactic measures to contain any outbreak of disease, allowing very high fingerling survival rates.
• Cost Effective: As cage culture can be practiced intensively, high yields can be achieved very cost effectively.
• Less Pollution: Since most reservoirs in India are designated for multiple uses, including supplying drinking water, cage culture is appropriate because it is minimally polluting and maintains the ecological health of the reservoir.