Aquaculture investments and opportunities for coastal counties

Abstract

The need for aquaculture development on the Kenyan coast cannot be overemphasized given that fisheries and other coastal resources that provide livelihood have declined due to increased demand for fish and fishery products. Issues of declining fish catches, deteriorating conditions of coral reefs, and the reduction of mangrove cover are not only affecting the coast of Kenya but the entire Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region. As exploitable resources become scarce, competition for these coastal resources has the potential to cause conflicts between different users. In response, the Government and other stakeholders have put in place various measures to control the deterioration of these resources, including restrictions on fishing and other harvesting practices. However, there is a growing realization that these measures can only be effective if additional livelihoods are established to support the communities that depend on coastal resources for their survival. Kenya has diverse water resources in terms of brackish, freshwaters, and marine water resources for mariculture and coastal aquaculture. Despite this enormous potential the few mariculture trials on prawns, oysters, mud crabs, sea weeds, and finfish have mostly stopped at experimental levels. Several attempts have been made by various interest groups and institutions to explore the opportunities in mariculture development along the Kenyan coast. Multiple stakeholders have provided different services in the past to communities concerning finfish, shellfish and seaweed farming. This chapter highlights the work undertaken by the KCDP teams led by the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, and it highlights the opportunities that exist for counties to invest in up scaling these ventures beyond the experimental phase into profitable livelihoods for coastal communities.