Adoption of sustainable capture based aquaculture practices by traditional fishermen of Karnataka

Capture Based Aquaculture (CBA) has emerged as the optimal solution to meet India's ever growing demand for protein food security, besides providing additional income to rural fishermen during the lean seasons. The following study documents the adoption of sustainable CBA in traditional farming systems with minimum inputs. The fish farmer being the end user in the technology adoption process, an empirical evaluation of the concept of sustainability is important in reducing the production costs, in harnessing environmental benefits and ensuring stable fish production. The reliability of Farmer Sustainability Index (FSI) to measure the adoption of sustainable practices in capture based aquaculture was measured using Cronbachs Coefficient of Alpha which worked out to 0.97, indicating a high index of reliability of the method used. The FSI constructed was administered to 40 traditional fishermen adopting CBA at Uppunda village of Kundapura taluk of coastal Karnataka. The overall mean FSI index for all the six practices from cage fabrication to harvest was 77.95, indicating a relatively high value of Farmer Sustainability Index for adoption of CBA practices.