Overview and challenges of blood cockle culture in Malaysia

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The blood cockle (Tegillarca granosa) is an important aquaculture species in Southeast Asia and plays a major role on economic importance in Malaysia since 1948. In comparing food value among other bivalves, cockles showed a cheap source of protein among Malaysians. Malaysia used to have a coastline which was suitable for breeding cockles, particularly, Selangor was enriched with a large number of cockles spat naturally developed from mudflats. Unfortunately, production of cockles spat in farming and marketing started to decline in 2000 and stopped production in year 2005 where there are only two main peaks for spawning season which are in March and November. Based on statistics from Department of Fisheries, unstable production of adult cockles occurred since 2011 and drastically declined in 2015, where the total yield for year 2015 was only 16,866.22 tonnes compared to 57,544.40 tonnes in 2011. With the decreased of cockle production, cockles are no longer considered as a cheap seafood resources but a delicacy marketed to the locals and tourists. There are several factors leading to the mortality of seed and adult cockles such as environmental issue, smuggling and overharvesting and low food availability in culture areas. The overview of the cockle status in Malaysia over 28 years, the challenges and the potential of aquaculture of cockles will be presented in this paper.