Milk fish farming project could help save Rs. 250 m

Anjana Samarasinghe

MILK FISH FARMING: Sri Lanka annually spends over Rs. 250 million to import fish bait for tuna fishing in the country.

National Aquaculture Development Authority (NAQDA) Director Nimal Chandraratne, told the Daily News that milk fish is used as bait for tuna fishing in Sri lanka.

These frozen milk fish have been imported from Indonesia and Philippines for tuna catching.

The NAQDA entered into private-public sector partnerships with Aqua Lanka Hatcheries to facilitate the supply of milk fish for the local tuna industry.

Chandraratne said through this partnership, Aqua Lanka is breeding milk fish in their hatcheries and NAQDA will provide infrastructure development for the project. Milk fish bred in these hatcheries have been provided for farmers interested in milk fish farming.

NAQDA is targeting prawn farmers who have abandoned prawn farms to utilise their farms for milk fish farming.

“Under this project we have stocked two million fingerlings in abandoned prawn farms in the Puttalam District belonging to 50 farmers,” he said.

Live milk fish could be sold at Rs. 21 to Rs. 22 and frozen fish at Rs. 15 to Rs. 18 for tuna catchers.”

This project could help Sri Lanka save a large amount of foreign exchange,” he said.