Marine Fishery Resources of Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh with a coastline of 974 km encompassing 9 coastal districts has had a long history of fishing. Starting with traditional fishing in ancient times to the modern, technology-intensive fishing, the marine fisheries sector of the state has grown tremendously reaching record landings of 3.42 lakh tonnes in 2014. The state has 555 marine fishing villages with 353 marine fish landing centres (CMFRI Marine Fisheriers Census, 2010). There are two major fishing harbors at Visakhapatnam and Kakinada where bulk of total trawl catch (nearly 70%) is landed and three minor fishing harbors at Bhairavapalem, Machilipatnam and Nizamapatnam. The marine fishermen population of the state is more than 6 lakhs with roughly a quarter of them, being acive in fishery related activities throughout the year. There are 31,741 fishing crafts in the marine fisheries of Andhra pradesh (CMFRI Marine Fisheriers Census, 2010). The marine fisheries sector, at present, is an important source of employment and income generation in the state, but is plagued with several problems. As because, this sector is vulnerable to external influences viz., overexploitation of marine resources, environmental degradation and climate change, efficient management is the need of the hour