Snakehead (Channa striatus) farming in Thailand
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Aquaculture has been practised in Thailand for many years. It is, however, only in the last few years that it has undergone rapid advancement. The principal reasons for the increased interest and development of fish farming are due to the recent advances in the development of culture techniques in the world particularly in the field of husbandry and management of culture system and the development of standardised artificial breeding technologies such that the supply of seeds are guaranteed and c ontrolled by the fish farmers themselves. Also important are the efforts of the Thai Government in promoting and aiding the aquaculture programmes. Farmers are now presented with alternatives of turning their rice fields and wasteland, such as swamps and ditches, into fish ponds. Fishermen and trawlermen, unemployed as a result of the overfishing of the stocks in the Gulf of Thailand, are encouraged to turn to aquaculture as a means of reducing unemployment and as part of the national developmen t programme. The rapid growth and the expansion of the fish farming industry has severely taxed the ability of the Department of Fisheries to maintain an account of all fish farming activities. This is not helped by the fact that most small scale fisheries do not keep any form of record of their operations. Consequently exact data on the present events of the smaller scale fisheries are limited. The present position statement, given below, is based on the estimates projected from records recen tly completed on 1975–76 data and adjusted by the opinion of DOF2 personnel who have daily contacts with aquaculture (Plodprasop Suraswadi, 1980). These estimates indicate that more than 20 species (including Macrobrachium sp.) are being cultivated in freshwater, yielding an annual production of 47,850 metric tonnes of which 95% is contributed by 10 species.