Marine Fish Landings in India - 2013

Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) which is a research and educational institute under Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Government of India. The institute had been spearheading spotting, studying and generating research results for problems and issues that keep cropping up in the Indian marine capture fisheries sector since independence. As a backbone activity for these pursuits, CMFRI has been devising, planning and conducting surveys through the coastal belt of the peninsular region of the country (except Andaman and Nicobar Islands (AN) and Lakshadweep Islands (LAK), which leads to scientific estimates of the fishery resources brought to the shore by our fisherfolk. As it is quite obvious, being a cessationless activity, sampling strategy has to be on a continuous mode and the estimates have to be periodic (for eg. monthly/ quarterly etc.) and a special statistical approach is needed for accomplishing this. Unlike other resources like crops and cattle, the marine resources appearing in the catch netterd by fishermen can never be pre-judged even at the type of fish level. Hence an unique sampling plan was developed by the researchers of CMFRI to cover all these special circumstances and has since been robustly finalised in the sixties. The methodology so unique in having specially trained unbiased observers to estimate the landed marine fishery resources has been acknowledged by FAO and has a strong backing of a team of Fishery Resource Management (FRM) experts, who contribute to the modification of the estimation procedure on an “as and when basis”