Rice-fish polyculture in bheries (enclosed paddyfields) has been a tradition in the West Bengal (India) delta. Fish are seeded naturally with the water let into the paddyfields. With the growing shrimp export market, shrimp culture in the bheries has proved economically attractive and the supply of tiger shrimp fry to the bheries is, now, a burgeoning business is West Bengal.

The Bay of Bengal Programme (BOBP), at the request of the Government of West Bengal, studied the problems connected with the supply of tiger shrimp fry to the bheries.

The problems were seen as a constraint to the development of the mainly export-oriented shrimp culture industry. BOBP looked into both natural collection and hatchery-reared supply of shrimp fry. It also helped the West Bengal Department of Fisheries to establish a small hatchery at Digha and it worked with some of the fry catchers of Medinipur District through a local NGO. The study of all these activities as well as the marketing process was seen as a step towards a better understanding of the existing tiger shrimp fry market and the fisherfolk involved in it. This, it was hoped, would lead to an elimination of some, if not all, the problems associated with the business. The BOBP study was undertaken under the ‘Small-scale Fisherfolk Communities’ project (GCP/RAS/118/MUL).