Fishing is a profitable source of livelihood
for the people of Lakshadweep where traditional
methods of capture are still in vogue to a great
extent. The traditional fishing methods and
fishery of Lakshadweep consisting of 27 small
islands of which only ten are inhabited have
been briefly described by Hornell (1910),
Ayyangar (1922), Ellis (1924), Mathew and
Ramachandran (1956), Jones and Kumaran
(1959), Varghese (1974), and Koya et. a/.
(1956). The exploited resources have been
dealt with by Silas et.al. (1986) and Kumaran
and Gopakumar (1986). Even though 603
species of fishes are known from the Lakshadweep
(Jones and Kumaran, 1980), only about
thirty species contribute to the commercial
fishery. Fish landings in some of the islands
were not even sufficient for local consumption
before 1958. The, efforts made during the past two
and half decades to exploit the tuna resources
by using pole and line has started paying good
dividends. The remarkable increase in the
landings of tunas especially skipjack is responsible
for the present prosperity of some of the
islands like Minicoy, Agatti, Kavaratti and Bitra.
Though the islands have only an area of about
32 sq. km. the lagoons, reefs and submerged
banks extending over an area of 42,000 sq. km.
is endowed with several commercially important
fishes. With the limited land area and a high
density of population, the possibilities for
developing other industries is limited, but the
sea offers good scope for the progress of the
islands. The vast difference in the estimates
of fisheries potential of the Laccadive Sea which
is reportedly of the order of 90,000 tones
(Jones and Banerji, 1973) and the present
annual landings (5,524 tonnes in 1986) indicates
that further intensive exploitation is called for
in the region
