Analysis of marine fish landings in India: A new approach

Fish landings in India are of multispecies, exploited by multigears. Species-wise stock abundance studies, in this context, pose problems not normally encountered in the case of single-species fishery for which evaluation of standard effort is not difficult and models are available to study such fishery in detail, Hence a new approach, considering multispecies fishery as a whole, is taken up for study in this paper where the relative contributions of mechanised crafts, prawn fisheries and pelagic fisheries are considered for detailed statistical analysis. This approach is found to be useful when there are considerable fluctuations in the landings which is the characteristic feature of marine fish landings in India, In this analysis three assumptions are made on the status of stock abundance and fishery independent and dependent factors. These assumptions are not contradicted by the analysis of variance. Three important points emerge out of this study. In majority of the States as well as on all India level, the trend of total landings was similar to that of pelagic fish landings. Increase in the intensity of mechanised effort has not relatively increased prawn landings. Landings from mechanised units showed an increase even when there was no increase in the total landings thus indicating the impact of mechanised crafts on the traditional fishing. In addition, this analysis gives a broad indication on the limitations of the present exploited fishing grounds in each of the maritime states along the coast of the main land