Marine Cage Culture

Introduction

In the simplest term a cage is nothing but an enclosure in the water body whereby the juveniles of aquatic animals are kept, fed and grown to marketable size. However, in practice it is very complicated in its structural, engineering, social and biological aspects. The cage culture was initiated in Norway during 70s and got developed into a high tech industry, particularly for salmon farming. Similarly the cage culture has spread to South East Asian countries and developed well.The major advantage in these countries is that they have large, calm and protected bays to accommodate the cages safely against natural bad weather conditions. Compared to that, India is endowed with very few such areas and the sea conditions are hostile at least during certain periods making the safety of structures uncertain. Added to the above, the Government of India or its maritime states have no water leasing policy for commercial open sea cage farming or any other mariculture activities in the sea.AII countries are interested to sell the cage related products which are suitable for them and may not be suitable to Indian conditions and are reluctant to transfer technologies suitable to Indian conditions.