Thousands of hectares of shrimp ponds in Odisha and West Bengal on India's east coast have been devastated by a powerful cyclone that swept in from the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday, according to several shrimp farming experts on the ground in India.
Cyclone Yaas was packing gusts of up to 140 kilometers per hour (87 mph), the equivalent of a Category 1 Atlantic hurricane, as it made landfall, reportsCNN.
Estimates of between 2,000 and 5,000 hectares of shrimp farm destruction were being made in various LinkedIn posts from industry experts, who described the event as "a major blow" for Indian shrimp farmers in the region, who are currently carrying out summer crop stocking.
Raj Somasundaram, CEO and cofounder of Hatch-backed tech startup Aquaconnect, cited "huge losses," while colleague and regional manager Abhishek Dwivedy described 4-5 meter high tidal waters worst affecting Bhadrak, Balasore and Kendrapara.
His estimates of impacted area was 2,200 hectares, but Manoj Sharma, president of Gujarat Aquaculture Feed Dealers Association and vice president of Gujarat Aquaculture Association drove his estimates higher, to 5,000 hectares across the two states.
At least three people died and tens of thousands were made homeless when the cyclone hit, inundating hundreds of low-lying villages, officials said.
It arrives just days after another cyclone tore up the western coast, triggering mass evacuations and piling pressure on authorities battling a deadly second wave of the coronavirus.
In West Bengal, an eastern state that borders Bangladesh, authorities said around 1,100 villages had been flooded by storm surges, leaving at least 50,000 homeless. "But the figure may rise as reports are yet to reach us from interior areas," state minister Bankim Hazra told Reuters.
In neighboring Odisha, around 120 villages had been swamped by heavy rain and sea water whipped up by the cyclone but people in most areas had already been moved to storm shelters, the state's top bureaucrat, Suresh Mahapatra, told Reuters.
Weather officials in Bangladesh said the storm was likely to swamp low-lying areas of 14 coastal districts, bringing tides 3 to 4 feet (0.9 to 1.2 meters) higher than normal. They advised fishing boats and trawlers to stay in shelter.
While the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh is the largest shrimp producing region in India, Odisha and West Bengal have seen substantial growth in recent years.
It's the second year in a row that India's summer shrimp stocking has been hindered, with a survey conducted among hundreds of India's shrimp farmers last year revealing major challenges throughout the industry.
Then, it was in large part to a slowdown in global shrimp exports and a nationwide Indian lockdown that shuttered many of the country's processors, resulting in a glut of shrimp with no one to process it.
What followed, as lockdowns began to relax, was processors still operating at reduced capacity, resulting in poor market absorption and low prices, Aquaconnect's Somasundaram told IntraFish at the time.
The Link LonkMay 28, 2021 at 03:21PM
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Devastating cyclone wipes out Indian shrimp farms - IntraFish
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