Augmenting Marine Food Production Through Fisheries Management and Mariculture

There is new aspiration of sustainable exploitation of marine resources and to achieve sustainable development goals (SDG 14) in recent years. In this context, this document delineates new scope of venturing into the blue economy relative to marine fisheries and mariculture. Potential interventions in marine fisheries include – (i) expansion of the commercial fishing area (beyond the 80 m depth) for harvesting high value fish species (such as tuna, lakkha), (ii) exploration for new fishing grounds and fisheries, (iii) value addition and reducing post-harvest losses, and (iv) assessment of fisheries stocks for estimation of potential yields and optimum sizes of harvest. Food production through mariculture mostly relies on – (i) domestication of new species (such as finfish: seabass, mullet, hilsa, grouper; crustaceans: mud crab; plants: seaweeds) for product diversification and risk reduction towards economic stability, (ii) production intensification (such as semi-intensive farming) and adoption of innovative fish/shellfish farming (such as marine cage culture, aquasilviculture, integrated multi-trophic aquaculture) to create new business opportunities, and (iii) live feeds (such as rotifers, artemia biomass) production for hatchery for sustaining the mariculture industry. Nevertheless, investments, knowledge, innovations, new technologies, new breeds and newly domesticated mariculture species can promise a blue revolution in Bangladesh.