Shrimps

Among edible crustaceans (shelled organism s) shrimp is considered as a highly valuable commodity. The great economic use of this resource for domestic and export purposes has led to over exploitation of most of the major shrimp stocks of the world. According to World Fishery Statistics, the global shrimp production, showing a rather slow annual growth rate of 4.5 to 10% during 1981-87 period, has been stagnating at about 2.5 million tonnes per year during 1988-90 period. The Indian ocean accounts for an average of about 3.6 lakh tonnes (17%) annually, of which nearly 65% com es from the Eastern region. While the fishery of this region showed an upward trend during the past few years mainly due to increased landings in Indonesia, Bangladesh and East coast of India, the fishery of Western Indian Ocean remained more or less steady at about 2.3 lakh tonnes. From the present level of shrimp production against the effort input it is universally believed that further increase in production of this resource from the conventional shrimp grounds is not possible to any appreciable extent. This being the case, development of deep-sea shrimping and aquaculture of shrimp has been given considerable stress as alternate means of augmenting production through out the world