A brief account is given of the Artemia populations occurring in Sri Lanka with respect to inland and brackishwater aquaculture activities

Royan, J.P.

Sunderam, R.I.M.

Aquatic Commons

J. NA,RA 31, (1984) 123-125 
Note on the Occurrence of ARTEMIA 
in Sri Lanka 
By 
R. I. M. SuNDERAM* AND JosEPH P. RoYAN** 
In view of the high nutritive value of the freshly hatched nauplii and the advantage of using 
the dry cysts as a source oflive feed, brin~ shrimp, Artemia cysts are used very extensively throughout 
the world in most of the hatcheries of both fresh water and marine fishes and crustaceans. 
Even today ornamental fish breeders depend mostly on brine shrimp naup1ii to feed their fry. 
Till very recently the entire world demand of brine shrimp cysts was met by a few 
commercial companies from San Francisco, Utah and Canada. Because of the heavy demand, 
the price of Artemia cysts went up and it seems likely that the shortage of Artemia cysts might 
become a major constraint on the growth and development of aquaculture in future. Hence, 
many aquaculturists and aquarium fish breeders started either looking for natural Artemia 
grounds or to easily available cheaper feeds like Tubifex, Daphnia etc., As a result of this, during 
the last decade nearly fifty or more new geogr8.phical strains of Artemia have been located 
throughout the world (Sorgeloos et a!., 1976). In recent years, Artem.ia has been successfully 
cultured in countries like Brazil (Persoone and Sorgeloos, 1980), Philippines (Delos Santos et al, 1980 
and Vos, 1981), Thailand (Tunsutapanich, 1980), India (Royan, 1981) and Indonesia (Sorgeloos, 1982). 
Sri Lanka, with the assistance from Asian Development Bank, is stepping up her 
activities on aquaculture -both inland and brackish water with emphasis on prawn culture. Rea-
lizing the importance of Artemia as a live feed in aquaculture, the National Aquatic Resources 
Agency (NARA) has initiated a project on Artemia culture. As a pre-requisite an initial survey 
was conducted along the southern, western and northern coast of Sr! Lanka which resulted in 
locating new Artemia grounds at Palavi (western region) and at Hambantota and Bundala (southern 
region) (Fig. 1). A few years back, Artemia (strain unknown) was located in the salt pans around 
Elephant Pass (Costa, PersonCJ.l communication). However, in this present survey, no trace of 
Artemia was found at Elephant Pass and Kurunchativu (northern region). In Asia, the presence 
of Artemia have been report~d from China, India, Iraq, Iran, Israe], Japan and Turkey (Persoone 
and Sorgeloos, 1980), but so far the presence of Artemia in Sri Lanka has not been reported and 
hence this is the first report on the occurrence of Artemia in Sri Lanka. 
Tuticorin (southern India) which is very close to Sri Lanka has a very potential Artemia 
population (Royan et a!.> 1970). Since both Tuticorin and Sri Lanka Artemia are pathenogenetic 
in nature (Vanhaecke, Personnel communication) suggest that Artemia could have been introduced 
in Sri Lanka from Tuticorin through the migratory aquatic birds. In fact Artemia needs active 
or passive dispersion vectors for its cysts, such as wind, waterbirds or man (Sorgeloos, 1983). Dis-
persion of Artemia to different environments through aquatic birds have already been mentioned 
(Royan, et al., 1970). 
* Research Officer, National Aquatic Resources Agency (NARA), Crow Island, Colombo 15. 
** Expert (ITEC), National Aquatic Resources Agency, (NARA), Crow Island, Colombo 15. 
124 
NARA is currently studying the Sri Lankan strain for the various features, viz. the volume 
of cysts harvested from natural habitats, survival of young nauplii at different temperature and 
salinity combinations, ecological characteristics of the population run on nutritional value of 
decapsulated cysts and different instar nauplii as a food source for fishes, crustacean larvae and 
ornamental fishes. 
A sample of Sri Lanka Artemia strain has been sent to the Artemia Reference Centre at 
Belgium for further analyses and identification of the strain. 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 
We are indebted to Dr. H. W. Jayewardene, Chairman and Dr. S. K. Onil Perera, Director 
General of the National Aquatic Resources Agency for their keen interest in this work. We 
also wish to thank Mr. L. B. Werapitiya, Chairman, National Salt Corporation and his regi~nal 
staff for all their co-operation in the survey work. Thanks are also due to Prof. H. H. Costa 
for his valuable comments. The help rendered by Mr. W. K. T. Perera, Research Assistant during 
the fields trips is also acknowledged. 
REFERENCE§ 
De los Santos, C. jr., P. Sorgeloos, E. Lavina and A. Bernardino. 1980. Successful inoculation of Artemia and pro-
duction of cysts in man-made Salterns in the Philippines. p. 159-163. In: The brine shrimp Artemia Vol. 3 
Ecology, Culturing, Use in ~quaculture. Persoone, G., P. Sorgeloos, 0. Roels, and E. Jaspers (Eds.). 
Universa Press, Wetteren, Belgmm. 456 p. 
Persoone, G. and P. Sorgeloos. 1980. General aspects of the ecology and biogeography of Artemia p. 3 - 24. In: 
The brine shrimp Artemia. Vol. 3. Ecology, Culturing, Use is Aquaculture. Persoone, G., P. Sorgeloos, 0. 
Roels, and E. Jaspers (Eds). Universa Press, Wetteren, Belgium. 456 p. 
Royan, J. P. 1981. Brine shrimp culture. In: Status Report on Coastal Aquaculture in India, pp. 46-60. National 
Institute of Oceanography, Goa, India. 
Royan, J. P., Navaneethakrishnan, P., a.nd Selvaraj, A.M. 1970. Occurence of Artemia salina in southern India. 
Current Science, 39 : 14. 
Soroeloos, P. 1982. Live animal food for larval rearing in aquaculture. The brine shrimp Artemia. In : Realism 
"'in aquaculture - achievements, constraints, perspectives. Bilio, M., Rosenthal, H. and Sindermann, C. J. (Eds) 
(In press). 
Sorcreloos, P. 1983. Brine shrimp Artemia in coastl saltworks: Inexpensive source of food for vertically integrated 
"'aquaculture. Paper presented at the World Mariculture Society Meeting "Washington Aquaculture 1983", 
Washington DC (USA), January 9 - 13, 1983. 
Sorgeloos, P., Baeza-Mesa, M., Benijts, F. and Personne, G. 1976. Current :research on the culturing of the brine 
shrimp Artemia salina L. at the State University of Ghent, Belgium. In : Persoone, G. and Jospers, E. (Ed)Proc. 
10th European Symposium on Marine Biology, Vol. 1, pp. 473-495. 
Tunsutapanich, A. 1980. Cyst production of Artemia in Thai salt ponds. In : IFS Provisional Report No: 9, pp. 
133-147. International Foundation for Science. 
Vos, J. 1981. Report on Artemia production in salt ponds in the Philippines. FAO/UNDP Consultancy Report 
PID/75/005/8, pp. 1-28. 
Fig. 1. Locations of Artemia in Sn Lanka. 


Note on the occurrence of Artemia in Sri Lanka

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Note on the occurrence of Artemia in Sri Lanka

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