Evolution of Fisheries and Aquaculture in India

to be included later

भारत में मात्स्यिकी और जलकृषि का विकास

कृपया पूरा लेखा पढ

Inland aquaculture in India: Past trend, present status and future prospects

In India, inland aquaculture has emerged as a fast-growing enterprise and a viable alternative to the declining capture fisheries. The present paper is an attempt to assess Indian inland aquaculture with respect to its resource base, output trends, systems and activities, yield gaps, adoption and impact on aquaculturists, economics, returns to inputs, investment needs, and future prospects. The paper is largely based on existing literature and observations made as part of an ICAR-WorldFish demand supply project. Indian aquaculture is primarily limited to inland sector and carp-oriented; for that reason, this activity received special attention. Freshwater aquaculture observed tremendous growth in the past 15 years, but immense scope still exists for horizontal expansion and increases in productivity (vertical expansion)

Coldwater Fisheries

The potential cold areas in India include the long stretch of Himalayas of around 2500 km from west to east and 200-400 km from north to south comprising an area of 594,400 km2. These area have different types of coldwater resources: upland streams, rivers, high and low altitudinal lakes and reservoirs located in different hill states of India. Around 8,243 km long streams and rivers, 20,500 ha natural lakes, 50,000 ha of reservoirs both natural and manmade and 2500 ha brackishwater lakes at high altitude inhabits large population of indigenous and exotic coldwater fish species in these mountain water bodies which have immense potential for aquaculture practices as well as capture fisheries

Indian Fisheries: The Setting

Indian fisheries and aquaculture is an important sector of agriculture, providing employment, food and nutritional security particularly to the rural poor and better access to protein rich food for all. It is also contributing to the agricultural exports and engaging about fourteen million people in different activities. With diverse resources ranging from deep seas to lakes in the mountains and more than 10 per cent of the global biodiversity in terms of fish and shellfish species, the country has shown continuous and sustained increments in fish production since independence. With support of government initiatives and policies, various innovations by scientific community, support from private industries and companies, fishermen, farmers, NGOs and self help groups, the sector has evolved from a modest, traditional and subsistence level to a sophisticated and modern enterprise. The country now occupies the third position in total world production and second in aquaculture production. ‘Fish for All forever’ necessitates the sustained development of the sector to cater nutritional needs of millions of people in future. India with vast water resources ranging from seas to cold hill streams and over 10 per cent of the fish biodiversity on earth has high scope for producing fish by utilizing the untapped potentials of inland and marine sector

Socio-Economic status of fishers of reservoirs of India

The present study is a rapid assessment of socio-economic status to estimate income, illiteracy and health of reservoir fishersinsevenstatesoflndia.stmctureddatafrom4l5fishermenwerecollected. The result indicated that against the Indian average literacy rate of '74.52o/o the literacy rate of 63.32% was recorded among the sampled hshers. The school dropouts were more at secondary level of education(57 .75%o ). Fishers' children were vaccinated in most of the states as per the recommendation of Indian Council of Medical Research. The average monthly expenditure of the households was worked out to be Rs. 3148.3 only, which is very low to sustain livelihood; often lead to indebtness

Freshwater Aquaculture

Indian aquaculture has grown at a faster pace of almost 5.5 per cent per year consistently since last 50 years. In some of the years the growth rate in the aquaculture was recorded as high as 9 per cent. Indian aquaculture has demonstrated a six and half fold growth over the last two decades, with fresh water aquaculture contributing over 95 per cent of the total aquaculture production and more than half of the national fish production. The three Indian major carps, namely catla (Catla catla), rohu (Labeo rohita) and mrigal (Cirrhinus mrigala) contribute the bulk of production with over 1.8 million tonnes (FAO, 2003) Average national production from fresh water ponds has increased from 0.6 tonnes/ha/year in 1974 to 2.9 tonnes/ha/year by 2009–2010 (DAHDF, 2010), with several farmers even demonstrating production levels as high as 8–12 tonnes/ha/year. For the newly introduced fishes like Pangus the production recorded was as high as 25 tonnes/ha/yr. At the national level as well as in state level, the production and productivity has been on the rise over a period of time. Backed by new policies like Fish Farmers Development Agencies (FFDA), National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB) and state initiatives, there are enough incentives to increase the productivity of fish per unit water areas

Fishers in Post-harvest Fisheries Sector in India : An Assessment of Socio-economic Status

This paper presents the results of study carried out during 2009-11, to assess literacy, health and income status of fishers in India with reference to postharvest sector which covered fishers in marketing and processing. The study covered five states and one union territory, covering 11 districts reaching 548 households. About 52.19% of the respondents fell in the age group of 36-55. The average male- female ratio was 1.03 and 66.61% of the families were in the small family category of 2-4 members. It was observed that the literacy rates among fishers in post-harvest sector in different states ranged from 63.74 to 95.81%. In general, the literacy rates were comparable to the national average. Maternal and child mortality were low in the sample studied and the average birth weight of infants was 2.68 kg. The average monthly income was Rs. 7027.45 with a daily income of Rs. 234.25. About 44.70% of the households had no savings and 47.81% of households were in debt

Inland Fisheries

The Indian fisheries date back to time immemorial, but, the saga of success has been related to early post independence years. With renewed accent on optimum utilization of country’s aquatic wealth for fisheries, the Government of India earmarked an ambitious programme of mechanization and modernization through upgradation of technology during early fifties. Therefore, Indian fisheries witnessed impressive transformation from a highly traditional rural activity to technologically sound well developed industry. Indian fisheries sector has growing steadily from the first plan onwards with the annual fish production of 0.754 million tonnes during 1950-51 to the level of 9.57 million tonnes during 2012-13

Marine Capture Fisheries

India contributes sign