Fishing in Salty Waters: Poverty, Occupational Saline Exposure, and Women’s Health in the Indian Sundarban

Collecting wild tiger prawn seedlings, also known as prawn post-larvae (PL), from rivers and creeks is an important occupation for more than 100,000 poor women in India’s Sundarban estuarine delta. Prawn PL collecting requires many hours of immersion in saline river water. This paper uses a large household survey to explore the determinants of poor women’s engagement in this occupation and the health impacts. The results reveal high significance for two variables: (i) the opportunity wage, proxied by years of education and (ii) child-care demands, proxied by the household child-dependency ratio. Together, these variables are sufficient to distinguish between women who have no engagement with prawn PL collecting and those with many years of engagement. The probability of self-reported health problems is also significantly higher for women with more saline exposure from prawn PL collecting and whose drinking water is from tube wells with higher salinity.

Culture Possibilities of Certain Brackishwater Species at Freshwater: A Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for Salinity Intrusion Prone Areas of Indian Sundarban Delta

Salinity intrusion into coastal mainland or freshwater habitat because of recent climatic changes is exacerbating production risks and challenging the coping capacity of freshwater fish farmers of Sundarban coastal delta in India. Hence, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the survival and growth performance of certain commercially important brackish water species in freshwater, and subsequent low salinities (5 g l−1 and 10 g l−1). Species like Scatophagus argus, Chelon parsia, Terapon jarbua, Etroplus suratensis, and Penaeus monodon showed the highest specific growth rate (SGR) at 10 g l-1 salinity. However, the growth rates were not differed significantly (P>0.05) compared to freshwater. Chelon planiceps and Mystus gulio exhibited the highest SGR at 5 g l-1 salinity, although growth rates of the fish were not differed significantly (P>0.05) with freshwater treatments. Comparable survival and growth of all species in the freshwater condition indicated their ability of healthy acclimation at freshwater ponds. Therefore, these euryhaline fish species can be promoted in the Indian Sundarban for culture in freshwater ponds as climate-resilient adaptation strategies. This study could be useful in decision making during species and farm site selection which eventually will minimize the risks from total crop loss during saltwater inundation.