The COVID-19 pandemic is a shock affecting all areas of the global food system. We tracked the impacts of COVID-19 and associated policy responses on the availability and price of aquatic foods and production inputs during 2020, using a high frequency longitudinal survey of 768 respondents in Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Myanmar, Nigeria. We found the following: (1) Aquatic food value chains were severely disrupted but most effects on the availability and accessibility of aquatic foods and production inputs were short-lived. (2) Impacts on demand for aquatic foods, production inputs, and labor have been longer lasting than impacts on their supply. (3) Retail prices of aquatic foods spiked briefly during March-May 2020 but trended down thereafter, whereas prices of production inputs rose. These trends suggest a deepening ‘squeeze’ on the financial viability of producers and other value chain actors. (4) Survey respondents adapted to the challenges of COVID-19 by reducing production costs, sourcing alternative inputs, diversifying business activities, leveraging social capital, borrowing, seeking alternative employment, and reducing food consumption. Many of these coping strategies are likely to undermine well-being and longer-term resilience, but we also find some evidence of proactive strategies with potential to strengthen business performance. Global production of aquatic food likely contracted significantly in 2020. The importance of aquatic food value chains in supporting livelihoods and food and nutrition security in Asia and Africa makes their revitalization essential in the context of COVID-19 recovery efforts. We outline immediate and longer-term policies and interventions to support this goal.

The Hilsa shad, Tenualosa ilisha popularly known as ‘Hilsa’, is one of the most commercially important fish species in South Asian countries. The species is widely distributed from the Persian Gulf to Bay of Bengal and ascends into estuaries, rivers and brackish‐water lagoons of the Indo‐Pacific region. Recently, the availability of hilsa has drastically dwindled in aquatic systems across this region, due to anthropogenic pressures, mainly intensive fishing and river obstruction by dams and barrages. Climate change may also be contributing to the declining populations. Hence, there is an urgent need for conservation of the species. In addition, hilsa is of great cultural and economic importance among the peoples of Ganga‐Brahmaputra‐Meghna basin, with very high market demand and increasingly high prices, presently an average of around US$ 12 per kg for consumers both in India and Bangladesh. Many attempts at hilsa breeding and culture have been made across South Asia, particularly in India and Bangladesh, since the 1900s. To date, no breakthrough has been achieved in completing the life cycle in captivity. This review provides an insight into the status of artificial breeding, larval rearing and culture of this species, and identifies research gaps that need to be addressed by future aquaculture development programmes for hilsa in South Asia.

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First paragraph: White spot disease (WSD) is arguably the most serious disease affecting penaeid shrimp, not just in Asia but globally. Since its first report in Japan in 1993 (Nakano, Koube, Umezawa, Momoyama, Hiroaka, Inouye & Oseko 1994; Momoyama, Hiraoka, Inouye, Kimura & Nakano 1995), the disease is now rampant in most of Asia (Wongteerasupaya, Vickers, Sriurairatana, Nash, Akarajamorn, Boonsaeng, Panyim, Tassanakajon, Withyachumnarnkul & Flegel 1995; Wang, Tan, Kou & Chen 1997; Mohan, Shankar, Kulkarni & Sudha 1998; Park, Lee, Lee & Lee 1998) and Central and South America (Global Aquaculture Alliance 1999a,b). In Asia alone, the loss of farmed shrimp production attributed to WSD is estimated at US $ 4-6 billion (Lightner 2003). Realizing the devastating impact of the disease on the shrimp farming industry, over the past 15 years both farmers and scientific communities have been working towards identifying ways to prevent and predict the disease outbreaks. Several factors, including stocking of WSSV infected post-larvae (PL), stress because of higher pH and un-ionized ammonia and lower water temperature have been identified as the major risk factors for WSD outbreaks in shrimp farms (Flegel & AldaySanz 1998; Mushiake, Shimizu, Satoh, Mori, Arimoto, Ohsumi & Imaizumi 1999; Corsin, Turnbull, Mohan, Hao & Morgan 2005). Detection of white spot syndrome virus (WSSV), the necessary causative agent of WSD in shrimp, is paramount for management of shrimp farms. Sensitive diagnostic techniques have been developed and they have been included into pond side kits such as Shrimple (EnBio Tec Laboratories Co. Ltd) and Rapidot (Shankar 2006) to assess the level of WSSV infection in larvae, grow-out shrimp and in brood stocks, so that effective managerial measures can be intervened to prevent the disease outbreaks. It is well known that WSSV can be detected at stocking, and that the association with crop outcome is most probably system specific. It is also known that WSSV can be found during the production cycle at a low level without leading to disease outbreaks (Tsai, Kou, Liu, Liu, Chang, Peng, Hsu, Wang & Lo 1999), and that finding histopathological signs of WSSV in moribund and dead shrimp is a good indication that the crop will fail (Mohan, Corsin, Thakur, Padiyar, Madhusudhan, Turnbull, Hao & Morgan 2002a). Nevertheless, it is still not known whether the histopathological signs of WSSV in a representative sample of shrimp collected during production allow a prediction of the occurrence of WSD outbreaks or of poor crop performance. In this study, we examined the association between the WSD status half way through the crop (i.e. at 6th week) and WSD status at the harvest and at the time of stocking and with the crop outcomes in terms of yield per hectare, survival, average shrimp weight and days of culture