Zeitschrift für Geowissenschaften und Klimawandel

Abstrakt

Sea Ranching of Laboratory Produced Seeds of Blue Swimmer Crab, Portunus pelagicus (Linnaeus) from South East Coast of India

P. Soundarapandian1, D. Varadharajan and T. Anand

The increased demand for the crabs in different markets and the depletion of resources along the coast has necessitated an urgent need for enhancing crab population. In this juncture, sea ranching is one of the right choice to increase the population. The fecundity rate of P. pelagicus was ranging between 9, 00, 000 to 10, 60,000 eggs in wild collected berried females, whereas 8, 72,000 to 9, 48,000 eggs in laboratory produced berried females. The berried females had similar incubation periods (6-7 days) for both the experimental setups. The hatching success of freshly hatched I zoea was 70% for laboratory produced berried females; however 71% for the wild collected berried females. The larval duration was 26.21 days for wild collected berried females and 26.50 days for laboratory produced berried females. The larval duration did not show significant difference between wild collected and laboratory produced brooders. In both experiments, survival rate was higher in I zoeal stages. The survival rate was decreased regularly when the development proceeds. The survival rate was very low when the V zoea metamorphosed into megalopa. The survival rate did not show significant difference between wild collected and laboratory produced brooders. The laboratory reared crab seeds were released successfully in Pudhupettai one of the coastal village in Parangipettai coast.