Sea Ranching Project

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The Union Minister of State for Fisheries launched ‘Sea Ranching at Artificial Reefs’ project to improve fish availability.

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Sea ranching is a process where in commercially important fish raised in captivity are released into sea when they are of a certain size in an effort to replenish natural fish stock. Artificial reefs (AR) are natural or manmade external objects or stable structures placed in the sea to provide an artificial fish habitat and thereby to attract, aggregate and regenerate fishery resources. Department of Fisheries is promoting Artificial Reef (AR) under PMMSY for rejuvenating coastal fisheries.

Recently, the State Fisheries Department in Kerala under the ‘Sea Ranching at Artificial Reefs’ released Twenty thousand seeds of pompano (Trachinotus blochii) fish into the sea off the Vizhinjam coast to replenish natural fish stock. 

The ‘Sea Ranching at Artificial Reefs’ project, is designed to replenish marine fishery resources and promote sustainable fishing practices.

Under the project, the deposition of one lakh fingerlings (Total 10 lakh pompano and cobia (Motha) fingerlings) at each of the 10 selected locations where artificial reefs were deployed under Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) has been planned. 

As part of the ‘Sea Ranching at Artificial Reefs’ project’s first phase, 6,300 artificial reefs have been deployed across 33 sites of the total 42 locations in the sea of Thiruvananthapuram district.

The Fisheries department is also awaiting Central government sanction for extending the artificial reef project beyond Thiruvananthapuram district.

• For Phase II: The department proposes to cover 96 villages in Kollam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam and Thrissur districts
• For Phase III: Ninety-six villages in the northern districts Malappuram, Kozhikode, Kannur and Kasaragod are proposed to be covered.

Note: The National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB) cleared the centrally-funded ₹3-crore PMMSY scheme this year. The ‘Sea Ranching at Artificial Reefs’ project is being funded by the NFDB. The PMMSY is an umbrella scheme with two separate Components namely (a) Central Sector Scheme (CS) and (b) Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS).

Exercise Poorvi Prahar

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The Indian Army is conducting a high-intensity tri-services exercise Poorvi Prahar in Arunachal Pradesh.

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• Poorvi Prahar is the integration of innovative technologies that are reshaping the future of military operations. It aims to hone the combat effectiveness of the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force in executing Integrated Joint Operations in the challenging mountainous terrain.
• The exercise brings together a wide spectrum of cutting-edge military platforms and systems, showcasing India's advancements in modern warfare technology.
• Troops are operating and refining skills with Swarm Drones, First Person View (FPV) Drones, Loitering Munitions, M-777 ultra lightweight howitzer, and cutting-edge technologies that dramatically enhance situational awareness, precision strikes, and operational flexibility.

Titan Arum Flower

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A rare and magnificent Titan Arum flower, towering over 10 feet tall, recently bloomed in Australia. This extraordinary plant, known for its infrequent blooming, typically flowers only once a decade.

Titan Arum

• It is also known as Amorphophallus Titanum. 
• The flower mimics the smell of rotting flesh to attract its pollinators, which are carnivorous insects, so it is also known as a corpus flower.
• It looks peculiar, with a tall, crooked, pale yellowish phallic structure — the ‘spadix’ — rising from the centre of what looks like an upturned meat skirt — its dark red, thick, waxy ‘spathe’, which is the spiral, petal-like structure that holds within it the inflorescence. 
• The flower has a long life span of over 30-40 years, but it blooms once in a decade and is one of the largest flowers in the world growing over 10 ft in height. 

• This flower produces around 400 reddish-orange fruits containing two seeds each.
• Its native range is in Sumatra, Indonesia where it is called bunga bangkai (bunga means flower and bangkai means corpse). 
• IUCN Conservation status: Endangered
• It was first described by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari in 1878.