CARRYING CAPACITY BASED AQUA ZONATION FOR BIOSECURED AND ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE – CASE STUDIES IN ANDHRA PRADESH

The common problems arising from the lack of planning and management of aquaculture are environmental issues, diseases, production issues, social conflict, post-harvest and marketing issues, and lack of resilience to climate change. Considering the present land use, extent of utilization of resources, carrying capacity (CC) of the source water bodies and site specific water quality parameters, there is a need to identify the suitable zones for aquaculture. The type of culture system and the magnitude of intensification permitted should be clearly defined for each zone based on the CC. Case studies conducted by ICAR-CIBA indicated that CC of few water bodies exceeded and it is necessary to regulate the intensity of farming. CIBA developed CarryCap an online web tool for the estimation of CC of water sources for shrimp aquaculture. This helps state governments and organisations to regulate the level of shrimp farming activity for each water body.

Aquaculture zone is an area dedicated to aquaculture, recognized by planning authorities that would be considered as a priority for local aquaculture development. Aquaculture zonation has multifarious benefits which include better regulation in the zoning area for eco-friendly and sustainable aquaculture, reduce the conflicts among aqua farmers and other land users, easing of aquaculture registration / license process, expand aquaculture in the identified potential areas. The concept of CC based Aqua Zonation has been initiated by Govt. of Andhra Pradesh and CIBA to prevent the conversion of fertile agriculture fields into aquaculture and to promote aquaculture in the low lying, prone to water logging and agriculturally unproductive lands.

Criteria have been identified which impact the development of coastal/low saline aquaculture technology such as elevation, soil and water parameters, vegetation and land use, user conflicts, access to infrastructure for locating aquaculture and other activities in order to define broad zones suitable for different activities or mixes of activities. Village has been considered as unit for notification of the aquaculture area. The existing aquaculture farms in brackish and fresh water areas and the potential lands suitable for aquaculture in water were geo tagged with survey numbers along with maps and declared as Aquaculture Zone. Aquaculture management areas (AMAs) with a defined number of individual farms that share a common water supply are being identified within the zones so that disease and water quality are best managed collectively rather than by individual farms.