Outlook for marine fisheries research in India

Mohan Joseph, M (2007) Outlook for marine fisheries research in India. In: Status and perspectives in marine fisheries research in India. CMFRI, Cochin, pp. 1-14. ISBN 81-901219 6-0

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Abstract

That marine fisheries is nothing but exploitation of a natural resource and human interventions in harnessing the resource will only harm the health of the ecosystem has never been better understood than at a time when the country’s marine fisheries are passing through a period of setback, stagnation and uncertainty. There is general belief that research in the field of capture fisheries should result in increasing fish production from the seas. However, the truth is that fish production from the seas depends on the productivity of the seas, the availability of fish at given point of time, the fishing effort expended, accessibility and vulnerability of the resources coupled with umpteen natural factors. Marine fisheries resources, unlike the land-based resources, are invisible, migrating and easily affected by the characteristics of the fluid medium in which they live. The resources are subject to its own dynamics fishing pressures and natural mortalities. Man has a lot of control on land-based resources through interventions, but in the seas there are no inputs from man, only exploitation. In other production systems such as crops, man can increase production by adding fertilizers, irrigation, pest management, using appropriate species, genetically selected seed etc. These characteristics of the marine fishery resources make it unique and difficult to fully understand, monitor, manage and intervene. The only opportunity for man to intervene is through management of the capture process. It is this uniqueness of the marine

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