Group finds room in ponds for marine fish

Baraka Group members with their harvest of milkfish in Kwale. PHOTO | LABAN WALLOGA |

What you need to know:

  • Baraka members are keeping the fish in ponds in a trade that is picking speed at the Coast.
  • Seed stock is sourced from deep sea because mature fish starts to lay eggs after five years.

Their big eyes and slender bodies make them stand out as a group of farmers put them in a plastic basket hanging on a weighing scale.

Each of the persons in the group of about 10 men and women were eager to see how many kilos the shoal of fish weighed.

It was harvesting day for the members of Baraka Conservation, Milkfish and Prawn Group in Makongeni, Kwale, who ended up with 640kg of milkfish that day. The group is pioneering the farming of milkfish in the larger Coast region.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes milkfish as “a large fork-tailed silvery herbivorous food fish (Chanos chanos) of warm parts of the Pacific and Indian Ocean”.

The 25 members have constructed earthen ponds with aid of Kenya Coastal Development Project (KCDP) — a government initiative — and are breeding juveniles (fish stage after hatching from eggs into larvae) for supply on orders.

Besides the juvenile fish, the group stocks four ponds with 3,600 fingerlings each.

Juma Mwarandani, a coordinator of the group, says the juveniles are captured from the ocean and kept in a floating cage that holds at least 5,000 of them for about a month to become fingerlings, when they are transferred to ponds.

“We started the mariculture project as a group 2013 by keeping milkfish, barracuda, mullet, grouper, red snapper, white snapper, zebra fish and parrot fish. But we found that milkfish and barracuda were adapting to the environment well,” says the 42-year-old.

They sell the fingerlings from Sh10 to Sh15 while mature fish goes for Sh200 a kilo.

“Last year, we sold 64kg, which earned us Sh128,000. This year things are good because our harvest has so far increased significantly.”

HUNT FISH

Getting the juvenile fish is not an easy task. Members of the group hunt for them in open sea twice a year in April, May and June season and October to December.

“We do not breed the juveniles because marine fish starts to lay eggs at five years when they weigh between 3 to 4kg. They need special tanks and skills that we do not have.”

During the months, the fish breeds in the deep sea and the seeds are swept to the shoreline in shallow waters in the mangroves.

“After trapping the juvenile fish (seeds), they are stored in a small pond that acts as a nursery for them to grow to the size of a fingerlings,” explains Mwarandani.

They make their own feeds from omena, cassava flour that acts as a binder and coconut trashes to make pellets that are rich in carbohydrates and protein.

Kenya Marine Research Institute Aquaculture Research officer David Mirera says KCDP is working with farmers to develop hatcheries to boost mariculture so that residents can stop going to fish in the ocean.

Dr Mirera says the higher the protein content in the feeds given to the fish, the faster their growth in the pond, thus, saving on the costs of production.

“Feeding is done depending on the weight of the fish. A 100g fish requires feeds 3 per cent of its body weight for it to grow fast to between 250 to 350g in seven months,” he says.