‘State promotes Scampi freshwater prawn cultivation to save the Sunderbans’

KOLKATA: Scampi freshwater prawn has been actively promoted since last year by the state in the Sunderbans and efforts are being taken to scale up its production this year as part of a sustainability solution.

Principal Secretary of state Irrigation and Waterways department Prabhat Kumar Mishra while addressing the International Delta Summit organised by Centre for River Affairs and South Asian Institute for Advanced Research and Development (SAIARD) on Friday talked about the fascination towards Vannamei also known as Whiteleg Shrimp cultivation and it being unsustainable.

Mishra said that they started promoting Scampi freshwater prawn,

which is reared in freshwater and not in saline water. Many women’s self help groups became associated with this and got involved in meen collection.

“The fascination for Vannamei and quick returns is actually forcing people to cut down mangroves.This problem is still not resolved. The areas which are at the fringe of the island and where saline water can be brought into some ponds, especially when they cut mangroves and rear Vannamei, that’s upsetting,”

Mishra said. According to him, the Yaas cyclone was more damaging than Amphan as it synchronised with high tide therefore the wave dash was much more severe and much more difficult to handle. The damages were very high.

“The Sunderbans is grappling with the problem of salinity. It was something that hit us hard while we were trying to do something for the Sunderbans and its livelihood because salinity has a very difficult impact on livelihood options. Repeated cyclones lead to salinity going into land for two-two and a half metres and it takes two to three years to leech it out completely. It becomes very difficult,” he said. The solution to this was to re-excavate creeks in the Sunderbans. People came forward and helped us, Mishra said and added that the project was running in 2016 and after continuous efforts, almost 650 kilometres of creeks have been re-excavated by now in the Sunderbans.