News Excerpt:

Unauthorized shrimp farming has resulted in contaminated water leading to health complications, rendered hundreds of coconut trees lifeless, and made people dependent on water tankers in several districts of Andhra Pradesh.

Background:

• India is the 3rd largest fish producing and 2nd largest aquaculture nation in the world after China.
• The Blue Revolution in India demonstrated the importance of the Fisheries and Aquaculture sector.
• The sector is considered as a sunrise sector and is poised to play a significant role in the Indian economy in near future. 
• In the recent past, Indian fisheries has witnessed a paradigm shift from marine dominated fisheries to inland fisheries, with the latter emerging as a major contributor of fish production from 36% in the mid-1980 to 70% in the recent past. 
• Within inland fisheries, a shift from capture to culture-based fisheries has paved the way for sustained blue economy.

About Aquaculture:

• Aquaculture is the breeding, rearing, and harvesting of fish, shellfish, algae, and other organisms in all types of water environments.
• Aquaculture in coastal areas comes under the purview of the Coastal Aquaculture Authority Act, 2005. 
• It must be taken up in designated aquaculture zones, and as per the rules, officials must ensure that agriculture, salt-pan areas, mangroves, wetlands, forest lands, and village lands are not used.
• Shrimp farming needs brackish water. Except near creeks, brackish water is not found in inland areas.
• In inland areas, the other way of accessing the salinity required for shrimp farming is to sink borewells 40-50 feet.

Challenges regarding Aquaculture:

• The faecal matter of shrimp and fish that settle at the bottom of the pond have ammonia, which gets mixed with the air when a farmer cleans the pond. 
• Its concentration is high during harvesting that takes place every twice or thrice a year.
• This affects the vegetation nearby.
• Shrimp ponds require a salinity of 5 parts per thousand (PPT) or more, while the normal PPT where other crops grow is not more than 0.5 PPT.
• It develops skin allergies in people due to the contamination.

Way forward:

• Aquaculture is good so long as it remains an activity carried out for sustenance. 
• The ecology suffers greatly when it becomes commercial.
• The government must first ensure a minimum support price (MSP) for agricultural crops. 
• If MSP is ensured, farmers will not have to go for aquaculture, which, though profitable, has many pitfalls. 
• The government should provide alternative livelihoods to the farmers, this may be the only way of protecting the environment and the people.