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| Blonde Prawn No 4 |
It is time now for the Nigerian Authorities to wake up to frightening realities in the marine fishing industry and begin to enforce regulations governing fishing and trawling activities in the Nigerian waters. The fact that hitherto abundant tropical fish like Croakers, tuna, snappers, shrimps and prawns are now imported into Nigeria by the same Asian companies that over-fished our waters to the death should be sign enough that a serious crisis is on the Nigerian plate in the marine fish industry.
Investments and attention should now begin to move towards evolving a homegrown cultivated shrimp industry while placing and enforcing a five-year ban on fishing and shrimping in Nigerian waters to allow the re-population of seriously depleted marine life. A cultivated shrimp industry located along the large network of estuaries and creeks of the nine coastal states will open up a new frontier for business engagement and mass employment for shrimps and prawns, internationally tradeable products of insatiable demand.
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| Tiger Prawn No 4 |
Figures emerging from worldwide trade on cultivated prawns is enough to cause the nation to salivate. Since the 1990's the total production of cultivated prawns have grown at a faster rate than any other agricultural product in the world.
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| Shrimp |
Since then global shrimp and prawns production has increased by 75% from 2.4 million Metric Tonnes to over 4.2 in 2004 with an annual average growth of 8% since then. Aquaculture i.e cultivated or farmed shrimp currently account for approximately 25% of total world production, a worldwide market valued at USD6 billion at the farmgate and over $20 billion in retail.
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