Some Indonesian Prawn Breeders Struggle to Meet Demand as Stock Grows Rarer, Pricier

Arti Ekawati, Jakarta Globe 19 Aug 09;

Breeding stock for giant tiger prawns has become rarer and more expensive over the past 10 years due to a decline in the quality of seawater and overfishing, local government fisheries officials attending an aquaculture conference said.

Cultivators of giant tiger prawns now have to pay anywhere from Rp 150,000 ($15) to Rp 1 million for one high-quality breeding female prawn, compared with only Rp 75,000 as cultivation peaked in 1985-95.

“Environmental degradation and the increased exploitation of the oceans, such as overfishing, have badly affected the prawns,” said Murdjani, head of the Lampung Provincial Marine Aquaculture Agency.

“This has had a significant effect on the prawn breeding stock in the sea.”

Murdjani was speaking in Jakarta on the sidelines of a one-day seminar on shrimp cultivation on Tuesday.

Production has been gradually declining since 1995 because of white spot and other diseases.

Haerani Saleh, the head of the East Kalimantan Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Agency, who also attended the seminar, acknowledged that the province could no longer meet its own demand for prawn fry because of the lack of breeding stock.

In the past, the agency had fulfilled the demand for breeding stock by catching large tiger prawns from the waters of Balikpapan. During the 1990s, Haerani said they could catch about 500 female breeding prawns every month. But this has dropped by about 50 percent.

The province needs about four million prawn fry annually to produce about 6,700 tons of cultivated tiger prawns.

However, with the breeding stock available at the moment, the province can only produce one million annually.

“We must buy another 3 million fry from other areas, such as Situbondo and Makassar,” Haerani said.

In 2008, the country produced 540,000 tons of prawns, including 162,355 tons of tiger prawns and 377,645 tons of vannamei prawns.

Some 124,835 hectares of aquaculture ponds across the country are devoted to the cultivation of tiger prawns, and 102,581 hectares to vannamei prawns.