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What workedA crab farmer in Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, in a Prothom Alo report

From shrimp to crab: 2-taka fry, and hopes pinned on December

To escape the disease risk that kills shrimp fry, this farmer turned a 100-decimal gher over to crab. The 1,700 fry released in May at 2 taka each are expected to reach 350-700 grams by December, when crab sells at 500-1,200 taka a kg.

This farmer at Minabazar in Hnila union, Teknaf, on the bank of the Naf river, farmed shrimp for about seven years before switching to crab three years ago. The reason was risk: a disease outbreak kills the fry and takes the whole gher at once. On a 100-decimal gher he released 1,700 crab fry in May, bought at 2 taka each from a hatchery at Kolatoli in Cox’s Bazar town. The fry are held in a netted-off corner for two weeks and moved into the open water at 50-60 grams. He expects them to reach 350-700 grams by December, when crab sells at 500 to 1,200 taka a kg - that is an expectation for the end of the season, not money already earned. The local shrimp farmers’ association puts a crab farmer’s earnings at 50,000 to 5 lakh taka a season; the Teknaf-Ukhiya area has around 60 ghers on at least 700 acres, and the district’s crab farmers have risen from 3,466 in 2020 to 4,270.

Lessons

  1. 1.Nursing fry in a netted corner to 50-60 grams before release is what keeps them alive; skip it and the fry money is wasted
  2. 2.Where shrimp disease keeps wiping out ghers, converting the same pond to crab cuts the risk without buying new land

Published with the person's permission, without revealing who they are.

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