Assessment of Economic Loss due to Use of Legal Codend Mesh in Multi-day Trawlers in Gujarat

Abstract

The current trawling practices result in high exploitation of juveniles of all commercial and non-commercial species, in all maritime states of India (Najmudeen and Sathiadas, 2008). For example, the percentage of juveniles exploited by trawl can be as high as 20 to 60% in the case of seerfishes and groupers and as much as 12% in the case of squids (Mohamed et al., 2009a). In other words, there is substantial amount of growth overfishing taking place for all commercial stocks in the trawl fisheries of India. Growth overfishing occurs when too many small fish are harvested, usually because of excessive effort and poor selectivity of the gear (e.g. too small mesh sizes) and the fish are not given the time to grow to the size at which the maximum yield-per-recruit would be obtained from the stock. A reduction of fishing mortality on juveniles or their outright protection, would lead to an increase in yield as well as profits from the fishery.