Aquaculture in Myanmar is considered to be medium to large scale with little or no small scale aquaculture (Edwards 2005). The FAO/NACA( 2003) report on aquaculture in Myanmar says:

There is no record of small pond holdings because this information is not collected and ponds less than 8 m x 8 m do not require licensing. Based on the observations of the Mission, there appear to be very few small (less than 400 m2 ) fish pond operations. This is unusual relative to other countries of Southeast Asia, where small ponds are quite popular.

A recent comprehensive study of aquaculture in Myanmar documented a large increase in medium and large scale operations but also indicted that based on satellite imagery there are 200,000 small backyard ponds in the southern Delta some used for growing fish mainly for home consumption (Belton et al 2015). There has, however, been no previous detailed description of small scale aquaculture in Myanmar.

During a village visit by staff of the Community Lead Coastal Management Gulf of Mottama (CLCMGoM) project1 to Tadar Oo village, Kawa Township in Bago Region we were invited to visit an aquaculture pond. There we discovered a small scale aquaculture system using monsoon flooding of the rice fields to stock the pond with wild fish, the fish were subsequently fed and at harvest about 20% of the fish were selected as brood stock to carry over to the dry period and spawn at the start of the next monsoons. This system is similar to ricefield fisheries practices throughout floodplain areas in Asia (Gregory & Guttman, 2002; Guttman 1998; Halwart & Gupta 2004)) What makes this system different from though is that the fish are not just trapped and then harvested but they are fed and brood stock is selected for the next year’s production. We consider this a type of aquaculture as opposed to culture based fisheries and are calling it Indigenous Aquaculture.