Nguyen Buu Loc, residing in Phu Quoc City of Kien Giang Province, southern Vietnam, and his wife started raising crabs in plastic boxes due to exhausted seafood resources at sea and have generated high returns.

Loc said the Rach Tram River in the namesake hamlet of Bai Thom Commune, Phu Quoc City is some seven kilometers long.

Along the banks of the river, there are a lot of melaleuca and mangrove trees, among others.

Crabs in the river have black bodies, red pincers, and tough meat.

They also grow fast and hold high economic values.

Loc used nets to fence around mangroves on the bank of the river, erected more wooden poles to fix the nets, and dropped plastic boxes of crabs into the river.

The crabs’ food is small fish. Loc feeds them twice a week.

“There are crabs in the Rach Tram River, so my wife and I caught baby crabs for farming. I initially raised some 100 units and saw the effectiveness," Loc said.

“Early this year, I bought more plastic boxes at VND25,000 [US$1.06] each to farm around 1,500 crabs.”

He has sold about 500 crabs raised this way.

Traders have even gone directly to his house to buy crabs at VND300,000-500,000 ($12.7-21.2) per kilogram, which is about three to six crabs.

With the high prices, Loc earned a profit of over 60 percent.

He plans to invest in an additional 4,000-5,000 plastic boxes to expand the model.

Loc also raises blue crabs to increase his family’s income.

Nguyen Van Quan, deputy head of the administration of Rach Tram Hamlet, said Loc is the first one in the hamlet to farm crabs in plastic boxes.

This is a new economic model that brings high profits.

The hamlet has established a team to support Loc and locals to improve their crab farming techniques, thus stabilizing their lives.

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