The Kenya Crab Farm

On site we have the first Crab Hatchery in East Africa. The hatchery will produce juvenile crabs for local grow out farms and for releasing in the mangroves, therefore ensuring a sustainable, ecofriendly approach to farming soft shell and hard shell crabs - while supporting local income (hatchery to supply crablets for self help groups/grow-out crab farms). 

 

The success of a crab hatchery is measured by the number of healthy crablets it can produce. On average, with modern RAS (Recirculating Aquaculture System) systems the survival rate can be expected to reach 10%. On average a female crab lays 2 to 3 million eggs therefore a 10% survival rate yields roughly between 200,000  - 300,000 crablets. The time from spawning (female laying eggs) to harvest crablets is about 25 – 30 days. At 60 days the crablets should reach about 100 grams. At that stage, the local crab farmers can come and purchase the crablets from the farm to take to their own grow out farms for fattening and ultimately to reach final market size of 300 grams +. The whole process from hatching to market size should take around 6 months.