Culture of brown mussel at Vizhinjam

Results of experiments on the cuhure of brown mussel in the Vizhinjam Bay and in the open sea are given. 25-29 mm spat collected during October and November from natural beds and grown on coir ropes suspended from 5 x 4 m rafts grow to 66 mm size in a period of 8 months, giving an average growth of 3.5 mm/month. In the open sea rafts the growth is still faster reaching 66 mm in 5 months at the rate of 5 mm growth per month. The possibility of a production of 150 tonnes of mussels/ha in the bay has been indicated