WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • JUNE 2017 61 The inland sector must play a greater role in fish production in India, with more emphasis on aquaculture and fisheries enhancement in open waters, especially reservoirs and wetlands. Considering the mounting pressure on land resources, most of the targeted fish production to meet country’s demand must come from comparatively underexploited potential fisheries resources like reservoirs through effective technological and social interventions. Optimum and rational exploitation of reservoirs has the potential to yield the quantity of fish required to bridge the gap between demand and supply and improving livelihoods of the rural populace. Cage farming can mitigate the present scarcity of fingerlings for stock enhancement projects as well as meeting the future demand for foodfish. This article covers the potential utilization of reservoirs for cage farming with prioritized candidate fishes and highlights issues and a way forward towards achieving a second blue revolution in India. Status of Cage Culture in Indian Reservoirs Farming fish in cages is an age-old practice in India. The ICAR-CIFRI has been demonstrating and popularizing low-cost cage culture of Indian major carps in inland open waters among Expanding Cage Culture in Reservoirs: An Initiative Toward the Second Blue Revolution in India U.K. Sarkar, A.K. Das, P. Mishal, Vikash Kumar and G. Karnataka stakeholders for many decades. The growth of cage farming received impetus during 20102012 with funding support from National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB) under the National Mission for Protein Supplements and the National Agricultural Development Scheme. The success of cage farming in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh states proved the potential of cage culture in India. Cage culture is now being scaled up in reservoirs in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra states (Das and Sharma 2015). This has led to adoption and widespread use of cage culture in reservoirs in more than 15 states. Presently there are more than 6000 floating cages in inland open-water resources of India (Sugunan 2015). Cage culture has tremendous potential to augment fish production in Indian reservoirs owing to the sheer magnitude (3.15 million ha) of the resource. The utilization of a mere 0.1 percent of the total area of medium and large reservoirs can yield average fish production of 1 million t, assuming moderate cage productivity of 15-25 kg/m3 (Table 1), indicating the enormous potential of cage culture in Indian reservoirs. Available water resources and increasing domestic and export demand for fish is attracting entrepreneurs and private investors to cage farming due to high economic returns. In (CONTINUED ON PAGE 62) Different types of cages installed in reservoirs of India.
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