Constraints in culture-based fisheries of Sri Lanka and strategies for future development

In the fisheries sector, fisheries enhancement through culture-based fisheries (CBF) has been recognized as an environmentally friendly approach, which is bound to contribute to increasing food fish production, especially in developing countries. Through concerted efforts, Sri Lanka achieved considerable success in CBF development in small village reservoirs in the country. However, there are some constraints to achieve the full potential in the development of CBF in Sri Lankan inland waters, which require certain interventions. Despite the availability of a magnitude of small village reservoirs in the country, the full potential of utilization of these water bodies is not achieved mainly due to the inadequacy of stocking material at the correct time under the present strategy of fish fingerling production for stocking reservoirs. It is therefore imperative that effective intervention be in place for the establishment of backyard hatcheries using simple technologies to the self-help community groups in the rural areas. The CBF strategies in non-perennial reservoirs of the country are essentially dependent on the water availability in reservoirs following monsoonal rainfall patterns. Due to anomalies in monsoonal rainfall patterns under climate change scenarios, water availability in non-perennial reservoirs in the dry zone of Sri Lanka for CBF development is rather unpredictable. As such, there is a potential risk that the rural groups engaged in fry-to-fingerling production face the difficulty of selling fish fingerlings to CBF farming groups when the non-perennial reservoirs are not filled due to insufficient monsoonal rains. An alternative strategy to link fingerling-producing community groups with the agricultural farming communities in minor perennial reservoirs should be in place to prevent such potential financial losses of fingerling producers.