Alternative resilient livelihood option for fisher-folks tsunami victims

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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.
1.1 Objective The main objectives of the study are to assess the growth and production performance in-situ floatinf rafts farming of Gracilaria under different conditions and it can also be ascertain whether the aggregation of herbivorous fish, economic feasibility of mud crab Scylla serrata in wooden cages and initiated milk fish farming Chanos Chanos in cages as brackish water culture among the mangrove vegetation at Paalameenmadu through the CIDA Restore project as an alternative livelihood to the fishermen for proper utilization of available resources in their region, to reduce the pressure in the coastal marine ecosystem and for increasing the opportunity for additional income generation other than fishing. 1.2 Background of the project area Paalmeenmadu is a small village located about 5 kilometers from the Batticaloa town in East coast of Sri Lanka. Most of the people of the area are engaged in fishing activities. This is one of the most environmentally damaged coastal area of the Batticaloa district by both the Tsunami disaster of December 2004 and the destruction of ecologically sensitive mangrove area due to unplanned developmental activities following Tsunami. Population increases, lack of other employment opportunities, and low literacy level force the local villagers to depend mainly on the fishery resources that can be harvested from the adjoining lagoon nourished with mangrove biota. As most of the fishermen do not have adequate financial support for in board engine boats and deep sea going vessels, they are restricted to coastal areas and the bar mouth area of the lagoon that are easily accessible with small lagoon canoes. Strained by decreasing fish catches, they are often compelled to use more effective and also destructive fishing methods, which reduce the productivity of the coastal resources even further. Over fishing and the use of destructive fishing methods have been prevalent for many years in this village. 2. Materials and Methods The CIDA Restore project’s implementation sites were Puthukudyiruppu and Paalameenmadu. We did Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and water quality survey to select the most suitable site for farming. According to our survey Paalameenmadu was found to be the most suitable place to implement the project. The inmates around this area were given an awareness program on seaweed farming crab fattening and milk fish farming. We selected the most interested and poorest village folks for farming. Though the maintenance works were carried out by the public the readings were taken down by us. The study was carried out from July 2008 to May 2009. The growth rate was monitored each week and the mean time water quality parameters including salinity, temperature, pH, rainfall, water flow rate, turbidity and dissolved oxygen were measured using calibrated Hanna portable instruments
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Page 11 and 12: Cage 5 17.14 12,855.00 58,762.50 Fo
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Alternative resilient livelihood option for fisher-folks tsunami victims

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