Field Visit to multispecies fish cage farm, Puthenvelikkara, Thrissur, Kerala

    A field visit was organised to the multispecies fish cage culture farm (25 cages) at Puthenvelikkara, Thrissur coastal district, Kerala on 16 September 2024. Since last 14 years, the owner of the farm, Shri Vincent S practices multispecies fish culture in cages including seabass, pearlspot, red snapper, and trevally with the support from KUFOS, Kochi and Directorate of Fisheries, Govt. of Kerala. He operates a multi-tier system for seabass culture using grading protocol categorising the cage units for nursery and grow out culture. Dr Sreekanth GB, Senior Scientist from CCARI interacted with the farmer and discussed regarding the water quality and disease outbreak issues in the cage culture. There are incidences of disease outbreaks and water quality changes in the region where salinity drop is a major concern for red snapper and trevally. The scientific advisories on the management of stock and disease control were provided to the farmer. The discussion also included the collection of natural fish seeds from the estuary using 1) establishing the cage traps and from local fishermen to reduce the shortage of seed supply, 2) starting the novel crab fattening units using designed HDPE barrels near the cages to improve the income from the given area. The possibility of trials of salt tolerant rice varieties/poultry, duck and goat farming/agro-eco-tourism were also discussed.