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The production of fisheries and shrimp has been twice every 10 years for the previous five decades, making it the most rapidly expanding food industry. This growth is due to intensive farming and the conversion of agriculture into aquaculture in many parts of South Asia. Furthermore, intensive aquaculture generates positive economic growth but leads to environmental degradation without proper monitoring. Unfortunately, technical innovation is less in aquaculture than agricultural and manufacturing industries. The advent of remote sensing and soft computing has expanded various opportunities for utilizing and integrating technological advances in civil and environmental disciplines. This paper presents the aquaculture scenario in the western Godavari delta region of Andhra Pradesh and proposes various novel assessment tools to monitor the aquaculture environment. An experimental investigation was carried out on the physicochemical characteristics of the inland aquaculture ponds to evaluate water quality in the aquaculture ponds. Furthermore, to assess the intensity of inland aquaculture, the current work concentrates on the potential application of remote sensing and soft computing approaches. Geospatial models of kriging and inverse distance weighing (IDW) show higher performance in estimating ammonia levels in the intensive aquaculture groundwaters with coefficient of determination (R2) values of 0.947 and 0.901, respectively. Teaching learning-based optimization (TLBO) and adaptive particle swarm optimization (APSO), two of the five soft computing techniques utilized in the study, perform better than the others. Additionally, it was found that remote sensing-based assessment tools and soft computing prediction models were both trustworthy, accurate, and easy to use. Furthermore, these methods could assist in the real-time evaluation of inland aquaculture waters by stakeholders and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews a range of global aquaculture health and safety literature to inform and contribute to the development of a socio-economic profile of Indian shrimp farm workers including the occupational hazards and injuries they face. In addition, 60 shrimp farm workers were interviewed from each of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. The study revealed that all shrimp farm workers were male, 58% were migrants, and ages ranged from 23 to 53 years with work experience of 5 to 24 years. Few workers (14%) had no formal schooling and many had secondary-level education. Reported physical hazards were high (93%) followed by biological (82%), chemical (77%), ergonomic (71%) and psycho-social (71%) hazards. The majority of physical injuries reported related to slips, falls and cuts (51%), electric shocks (44%), sunburn (41%), dehydration/ headaches (40%) and fractures (27%). Approximately 30%-39% had some chemical injury with skin infections/breathing problems. Indian shrimp farm workers face similar occupational hazards and injuries to shrimp farm workers in other countries. The occupational health and safety of shrimp farm workers should be integrated into the concept of 'One Health' to ensure aquaculture sustainability and safe, meaningful and good quality employment to workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensive aquaculture practices generate highly polluted organic effluents such as biological oxygen demand (BOD), alkalinity, total ammonia, nitrates, calcium, potassium, sodium, iron, and chlorides. In recent years, Inland aquaculture ponds in the western delta region of Andhra Pradesh have been intensively expanding and are more concerned about negative environmental impact. This paper presents the water quality analysis of aquaculture waters in 64 random locations in the western delta region of Andhra Pradesh. The average water quality index (WQI) was 126, with WQI values ranging from 21 to 456. Approximately 78% of the water samples were very poor and unsafe for drinking and domestic usage. The mean ammonia content in aquaculture water was 0.15 mg/L, and 78% of the samples were above the acceptable limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO) of 0.5 mg/L. The quantity of ammonia in the water ranged from 0.05 to 2.8 mg/L. The results show that ammonia levels exceed the permissible limits and are a significant concern in aquaculture waters due to toxicity. This paper also presents an intelligent soft computing approach to predicting ammonia levels in aquaculture ponds, using two novel approaches, such as the pelican optimization algorithm (POA) and POA coupled with discrete wavelet analysis (DWT-POA). The modified and enhanced POA with DWT can converge to higher performance when compared to standard POA, with an average percentage error of 1.964 and a coefficient of determination (R2) value of 0.822. Moreover, it was found that prediction models were reliable with good accuracy and simple to execute. Furthermore, these prediction models could help stakeholders and policymakers to make a real-time prediction of ammonia levels in intensive farming inland aquaculture ponds. [Display omitted] • Inland aquaculture pond effects will enhance nutrient fluxes into the delta. • Degradation of water quality was associated primarily with intensive shrimp farming. • Discrete wavelet transforms are effective for decomposing and enhancing dataset. • DWT-POA ammonia prediction model outperformed standalone POA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aquaculture plays a significant role in food security and provides livelihoods and employment for millions of people among coastal communities worldwide. However, the growing aquaculture sector has also created debates around its long-term ecological sustainability, economic viability, potential social inequalities and governance issues. We investigated the perceived challenges and opportunities to achieving sustainable mud crab aquaculture in tropical coastal regions by using the case study of coastal mud crab farms in Andhra Pradesh, India. Informed by perceptions and indicative financial data from a sample of stakeholders we investigated the potential economic outcomes under different scenarios representing varying yield levels, risk factors and project time periods. The main risks identified by the stakeholders were associated with the limited supply of mud crab seeds and the lack of access to governmental and non-governmental support schemes. There are no financial buffers, therefore major disease outbreaks or extreme weather conditions caused by climate change would lead to a loss of livelihoods. This paper also highlights the most critical factor determining the level of success of mud crab farming being the crab survival rate which is influenced by a variety of factors including increasing sea surface temperature. The results of this study show that small-scale mud crab farming has fewer risks and higher flexibility involved than large-scale mud crab farming. It could be an economically sustainable enterprise and serve as a tool for poverty alleviation in developing countries if microfinance support and training are available. • Small-scale mud crab aquaculture can be economically, environmentally and socially sustainable in tropical coastal regions. • The sustainability of mud crab aquaculture expansion depends on access to affordable loans, training and sustainable feed. • Ensuring a high survival rate of mud crabs, influenced by climate change and disease , is critical for aquaculture success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shrimp Farming a subsector of aquaculture plays major role in protein production for the world and attaining a remarkable growth from the past decades. The present work was carried out on data collected from 80 shrimp farms along with farmers in different mandals of Nellore district. Increased cost of production on account of feed, labor and the mandatory certificates requirements are suggested to be some of the important factors leading to the production decline. The present study focuses on technical competence of shrimp farmers in the Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh using Stochastic Production Function and Technical Incompetence. The estimates mean Technical Competence of the shrimp farmers was 93.08% which means the shrimp farmers operate at 6.94% below the stochastic production. Age, Education, Technology Adopted, Farmers Associations and Societies, Experience of the farmers were found to have a substantial effect on the Technical Competence. Major technological training opportunities could make the difference in adopting value added technologies to upsurge the overall productivity of the farm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water is essential for all living organisms in the universe. Chemicals can cause contamination in groundwater near aquacultural activity areas. Keeping in view the hectic aquacultural activity in surrounding locations of Akividu town in West Godavari District of AP, India, it is proposed to assess the chemical and microbial contamination of waters to suggest remedial measures to protect the quality of water for safeguarding the health of the public residing in the nearby habitations who consume these waters for drinking purposes. 16 Groundwater samples were collected and analyzed for assessing the physicochemical parameters viz., pH, Electrical conductivity (EC), Total Dissolved solids (TDS), Total hardness (TH), Total Alkalinity (TA), Na+, K+, Calcium, Magnesium, Chloride, Sulphate, Nitrate and Phosphate, Irrigation parameters like %Na, SAR, KR RSC, and microbial analysis. The study results revealed that the samples were contaminated chemically and also with pathogenic bacteria like Pseudomonas, Citrobacter freundii and Escherichia coli which can cause water-borne diseases. Further, a health survey was carried out to verify the adverse effects to be caused by the chemical and microbial contamination of water on people’s health. The health survey results indicated the sufferings of the people who consume this water for drinking and domestic purposes. The waters are to be treated accordingly to control the chemical and bacterial contamination by using the available treatment methodologies before considering them for drinking purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shrimp aquaculture in India is synonymous with coastal aquaculture. Like other agricultural activities, it appropriates a wide range of environmental goods and services, and is vulnerable to impacts of climate change as the cultured animals are sensitive to various kinds of biotic and abiotic stressors. Climate change affects the shrimp aquaculture directly by extreme weather events and seasonal variations, and indirectly alter the primary and secondary productivity, structure and composition of the ecosystems or by influencing the availability of fishmeal, fish oil and other goods and services required for aquaculture farmers. The perceptions of farmers on the impacts of climate change on shrimp aquaculture in inland and coastal areas of Krishna District, Andhra Pradesh are discussed. Cyclone and flood were perceived by all the farmers, whereas irregular season, high temperature, heavy rain and drought were perceived by 79, 89, 91 and 5 % of farmers, respectively. Environmental, biological, and economic impacts of climate change drivers on aquaculture indicated 20 to 30 % loss due to seasonal variations and 50 to 100% loss due to extremely heavy rainfall, flood and cyclones. The economic risk rating was high with flood followed by the cyclone and the magnitude was more in coastal areas compared to inland areas. There is no universally applicable list of adaptation measures and need to be evaluated for individual aquaculture systems. Autonomous and planned adaptation measures to be implemented by farmers, researchers and policymakers are discussed for climate-resilient aquaculture. Planned adaptive measures are either at the primary level or non-existence, hence policy initiatives are required to formulate planned adaptive measures to enhance the adaptive capacity of the farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]