You cannot teach a crab to walk straight, says Greek playwright Aristophanes, but nobody said you could not walk straight to a crab — especially when your sustenance depends on it.

The fishing communities of Kharo Chan and Keti Bunder union councils in Sindh have traditionally been described as being at risk of becoming food insecure.

Climate change and overfishing have unfortunately wreaked havoc with the local marine ecosystem in the Indus Delta, making it increasingly difficult for fisherfolk to catch enough fish to support themselves and their families.

Not anymore: through an aquaculture intervention, fisherfolk in the fishing villages of Kharo Chan and Keti Bunder have been introduced to crab fattening ponds — a place where mud crabs can be bred and extracted as and when the need arises. A fully-grown crab sells for anywhere between Rs400-800 in Karachi’s markets. The intervention, in essence, is to return to nature to find an organic solution to food insecurity.

The best kinds of solutions are simply natural: an aquaculture intervention in the Indus Delta improves fisherfolk livelihoods as well as the marine ecosystem

“These mud crab fattening ponds are like our local banks; when we need cash urgently we go in and take out one of the crabs and sell them in the market,” explains Ghulam Mohammed Baloch, a fisherman living in Qadir Buksh Baloch village in Kharo Chan.

The initiative has been driven by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)-Pakistan at selected sites in both Kharo Chan and Keti Bunder union councils, through their Building Capacity on Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal Areas of Pakistan (CCAP) project.

Baloch’s pond, for example, was built by the CCAP project in November 2013. It is located near his wooden hut so he can keep an eye on it; there is a wired fence around it to keep out dogs and other predators. A small pipe brings the saline water from the nearby creek into the pond and there is a mesh on it to prevent the crabs from escaping.

“We put small mud crabs into the pond; these we either buy alive for around Rs80 from the local market or our children catch them from the mangrove areas and then we wait for them to mature in a few months,” says Ghulam Mohd. “Currently, all the 700 or so crabs in my pond are mature and full of meat, but we are waiting for the market rates to go up in December/January before selling the crabs. Right now the rate is too low to sell the crabs for a profit.”

“These mud crab fattening ponds are like our local banks; when we need cash urgently we go in and take out one of the crabs and sell them in the market”, explains Ghulam Mohammed Baloch, a fisherman living in Qadir Buksh Baloch village in Kharo Chan.

This practice of crab fattening is very common in South East Asia where cages, pens and small ponds are being used for holding crabs for a short period of three to four weeks.

The CCAP project had earlier conducted a socio-economic survey in the area and the project learnt that 40 per cent of the people in Keti Bunder and nearly 50pc of households in Kharo Chan earn Rs50 per day or less, which is well below the national poverty line. Hence crab fattening ponds were introduced; the project also experimented with shrimp and other kinds of fish but found that water in the creeks was too saline for fish farming.

There are just two crab fattening ponds in Qadir Buksh Baloch village as the requirement of the project was for the local community to contribute Rs10,000 for each pond constructed. The construction cost for each pond was around Rs50,000 for the labour to dig the pond and for construction materials like nets, wooden stakes and pipes.

“It was expensive for me to construct this pond,” explains Ghulam Mohd. “I also have to feed the crabs around 10 kilos of fish every day; but I am hoping for a sizable profit of over Rs 600,000 once the market rates goes up in the winter months and I sell all these crabs.”

Other villagers in the area have visited his pond and they are also making smaller versions of these ponds by themselves. “I would say there are around 22 ponds altogether that I have heard of in the area,” says Ghulam Mohd. “It seems to be a very successful idea.” The CCAP project itself has constructed six crab fattening ponds in Keti Bunder and another six in Kharo Chan.

An earlier crab culture model was introduced in Keti Bunder by WWF-Pakistan’s Indus For All Programme in 2010, when a crab fattening pond was constructed and handed over to the community. When the crabs matured the community sold them for rates of up to Rs800 for each crab, thereby making a huge profit.

Fisherman Saleem Dablo from Meero Dablo village in Keti Bander, one of the beneficiaries of this earlier project, only has good things to say about the benefits accrued thus far: “It has increased my monthly income two-fold without giving me the trouble of going to the sea.”

Slowly but surely, other fisherfolk in the area have begun thinking the same way: fighting nature is a lost cause, but working alongside it reaps great returns.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 14th, 2014