Alternative resilient livelihood option for fisher-folks tsunami victims

1. Introduction
Livelihoods in coastal areas totally depend on lagoon, coastal, offshore and deep sea fishing. Over
the years, there has been a steady increase for the demand for fish protein in the developing country.
Sri Lanka is already on the road to maximize aqua-exploitation along with the gold rush started
back in 1990s. There is a need for development of an eco-friendly aquaculture industry is urgently
needed. Unlike other intensive aquaculture ventures seaweed farming, crab fattening and milk fish
farming in cages would be not only a good source of protein, nutrients for human diets and an
alternative to the depletion of fish from the sea and thus pave a way to ameliorate an environmental
pressure, but also a source of income for fisher folks.
The national knowledge on seaweed farming in Sri Lanka is limited. There this farming carried out
only small scale as community based seaweed farming. Seaweed farming could be a source of
alternative income for fishermen to that of fishing. The culture period can last for 45 days and it is
an environmental friendly farming method (Jayasuriya, 1987). Seaweeds for direct human
consumption are worth more than those destined for industrial use. Culturing of the mud crab Scylla
serrata is not economical and hence the crab fattening is practiced. The watery crabs at post-molt
stage are fetching very low prices in the market and are even rejected in the export market because
of their poor meat content. If fattened, they fetch a high price. In order to improve the living
conditions of fisher folk and to reduce the pressure in the coastal marine ecosystem, alternative
livelihood schemes were introduced to empower the village community especially for the women to
earn extra income in their own and to help his her family to enhance their socio-economic status.
Crab fattening is much more profitable than any other coastal aquaculture operations currently in
practice (Sathiadhas & Najmudeen, 1991).The Crab fattening programme is one of such schemes
initiated by the CIDA Restore Project in the Palameenmadu village with support from the
Department of Fisheries, Batticaloa.
The Mangrove ecosystem caters several environmental and economical functions to the surrounding
peoples directly and indirectly. Supporting rich biodiversity, preventing coastal erosion, sea surge
mitigation, facilitating of fish and shellfish spawning are some environmental functions of
mangroves (Santharooban and Vinobaba, 2008). Though the mangroves support the community in
several ways in Batticaloa district, but it is being continuously destroyed by human anthropogenic
effects and other causes. Brackish water aquaculture was initiated very recently as an experimental
venture with a view to its promotion. Milkfish (Chanos chanos) is an important food fish. The
success of milkfish as a cultured food fish species may be attributed to its ability to tolerate
extremes of environmental conditions. These conditions include extremes of temperatures, salinity,
dissolved oxygen, ammonia, nitrite, crowding and starvation (Duenas, 1983). Their adaptability to
these factors has allowed milkfish culturists to exploit the species by manipulating culture
conditions.