Mariculture Development in Seychelles and other Western Indian Ocean Island States: an Overview of Challenges and Prospects.

Abstract

Seychelles has a relatively long history of prawn farming, which was established on Coetivy Island in 1989 by the Islands Development Company Ltd and the Seychelles Marketing Board and later taken over and managed by the latter. The farm comprised of two hatcheries and around 200 ponds and occupied an area of around 96 ha, and when in full production had a workforce of around 350 people (mainly Thai and Sri Lankan nationals). Production of Penaeus monodon (Black Tiger prawn) peaked at 1200 tonnes per annum in 2004, but by 2007 had declined to just under 400 tonnes (Fig. 1). Broodstcok w as imported from Madagascar and Mozambique. The product was held in high esteem internationally and locally (Hecht, 2009). For several reasons production at the prawn farm ceased in late 2008. Amongst others these included the high operational costs due to the location of the farm, which is situated approximately 300 km away from the inner islands and the difficulty to produce sufficient numbers of post larv ae for stocking into grow-out ponds and other private sector interests. Much of the hardware of the farm has been sold, but the pond infrastructure remains available for future developments.