Status of marine fisheries in India - Winter School onImpact of Climate Change on Indian Marine Fisheries held at CMFRI, Cochin 18.1.2008 to 7.2.2008

Marine fisheries sector in India plays a significant role in Indian economy and provides livelihood security to about 3.5 million coastal rural folk living in 3200 marine fishing villages. The substantial growth of the sector is due to innovative and efficient fishing practices, government policies, well developed harvest and post-harvest infrastructure and increased demand for marine fish products in the domestic and international markets. The growing demand resulted in fishing effort intensification, extension of fishing grounds, increase in overall length of fishing boats, holding capacity of the trawlers, fishing effort in terms of fishing hours through multi-day fishing by the mechanized sector and enhanced fishing operations by the motorized sector. Multiday fishing that came into vogue in the 90s. The production, which reached 2.7 million t in 1997, has remained almost invariant. The asymptotic production level in all the regions of exploitation indicates a little scope for further increase. Thus, there is an urgent need to ensure sustainability of resources through appropriate management interventions as envisaged in the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and also in the context of global warming and climate change.

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