WIO Mariculture Forum

There has been a lot of effort to develop sustainable, low tech, mariculture practices as diversified livelihood options for coastal communities. Already there are successes in seaweed farming and to a lesser extent milkfish farming, bivalve farming, prawn farming, half pearl farming and crab fattening in some of the Western Indian Ocean countries. There are a number of documents written about these developments some of which are available at http://www.crc.uri.edu/, http://www.wiomsa.org/ and http://www.iode.org/ to name but a few.

The purpose of this first discussion is to do a situation analysis and decide the way forward as far as mariculture is concerned. The first questions are on milkfish farming:

Question 1. Are we ready to take off?

Question 2. If not is the problem one of those listed below? Why? Or is there something else?

1. Technical
2. Economical
3. Extension
4. Sociological