Development of Captive Breeding, Seed Production and Culture Techniques of Snakehead Fish for Species Conservation and Sustainable Aquaculture

Abstract

Abstract-The murrel or striped snakehead Channa striatus, a carnivorous air breather, is one of the valuable food fish, which deserves immediate attention for commercial scale seed production and grow-out farming. It is one of the best and excellent table-size fish in Bangladesh, India as well as in South East Asia. It fetches high prices in the market due to strong demand, higher nutritional and pharmaceutical values, food delicacy, and can also be sold alive. The fish is considered as one of the commercially important species in Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia. However, in the recent years, the natural stocks of the fish are decreasing severely due to the increased anthropogenic activities, habitat alterations and unstrained harvesting. As a result, the natural breeding and feeding grounds of this high-valued fish species have been destroyed, which caused havoc to the biodiversity leading to decline in wild stocks. Presently, C. striatus is considered as a threatened fish species in Bangladesh. Due to the non-availability of quality seeds and difficulty in induced breeding of this fish, not much could be achieved towards commercialization of the species or conservation. Keeping this in mind, it is now very important to protect this endangered species in a sustainable and worthwhile manner. In the present investigation, advancement of the controlled breeding, seed production and culture protocols have been described and the difficulties faced by the farmers and farm-entrepreneurs in snakehead farming are briefly discussed and suggestions to overcome the problems are accentuated.

Identification, genetic diversity, and comparative evolution of the striped snakehead Channa striata (Bloch, 1793) in Wallacea, Indonesia

“…In South Sulawesi, snakeheads sell for around IDR 100,000/kg (around US$ 6.8), and IDR 54,000/kg in South Kalimantan (BPBAT Mandiangin 2014). This fish is very popular due to its white flesh, pleasant flavor, and relatively low number of intramuscular spines compared to many other fishes (Dayal et al 2013;Rahman and Awal 2016). It also has high nutritional content, health benefits, and pharmaceutical properties (Sahu et al 2012).…”

“…Snakeheads are currently being widely farmed in Southeast Asia (Duong et al 2019;Phan et al 2021;Alam et al 2022) as well as in India (Kumari et al 2018) and Bangladesh (Alam et al 2022). However, snakehead farming is constrained by limited seed availability, and poor recovery or recruitment of young fish (juveniles) to natural stocks/populations (IUCN 2015;Alam et al 2022), the low captive breeding survival rate in the initial period due to huge size variation and cannibalism (Rahman and Awal 2016), and the lack of appropriate formulated diets (Hien et al 2015).…”