Management of a shrimp hatchery is nothing but management of a 10000-bedded ICU in the hospital. Hatcheries are one of the fragile ecosystems in aquaculture used to cultivate shrimp where they are transferred to on-growing systems to reach maturity. Poor nutrition management and disease pressure are two factors that continually threaten operations in a hatchery. Interestingly, a fisher woman Anatha Vijaya of Besthapet in Bapatla is managing two hatcheries on the coast. Vijaya is the lone fisher woman to own and manage a shrimp hatchery in the country.
Born into a traditional fishermen family, Vijaya is the first-generation post-graduate and turned as full-fledged entrepreneur after marrying a scholar in fisheries Nagesh Babu. “It is extremely difficult task to handle the operations in hatcheries. As a woman, it is further difficult to absorb the pain of losing a crop due to variety of reasons including viruses,” Vijaya told ‘TOI.’ She explained that hatchery operations require almost 24×7 attention as the staff would be clueless to handle certain diseases which suddenly crop up during the course. They will produce about 99 million seed (infant shrimp) per each crop which will be sold to the shrimp farmers across the country.
Vijaya is managing two hatcheries-Lalitya Hatcheries, Lakshitha Bioresources-one each located in Bapatla and Kakinada. Business volume of both the units is around Rs.4 crore. “It will take 25 days to get the yield which costs around Rs.15-20 lakh. We pump in at least Rs.2 crore per year while the returns are not so lucrative for the past three years. Frankly, we are making a tightrope walk with nominal margins due to the frequent loss of crop and dip the market prices,” explained Vijaya, mother of two girl children.
In fact, getting clearances from Coastal Aquaculture Authority (CAA) to set up a hatchery itself is big task as they have to follow stringent rules. There are about 461 hatcheries approved by CAA across the India while Vijaya is the lone fisher woman to get the hatchery license. “Experts from CAA will make periodical inspection of hatchery and they do not hesitate the suspend the license if any violations are found. So, we maintain the hatcheries in compliance with the CAA guidelines and with global standard infrastructure,” said Vijaya. About 50-60 workers including expert technicians are working in the hatcheries to take care of the crop. Interestingly, the hatchery is also help generate several dozens of locals with indirect employment. “I have been encouraging women from our community to set up small grocery shops and eateries close to our plants as we purchase groceries worth Rs.2-3 lakh per month as we provide three-meal a day to our workers in the plants,” said Vijaya. She is also state working president women wing of National Federation of Fishermen (NAF) and received many awards from state and union government for her exemplary work in the field.