Pollution is eating into India's fish stocks, finds National Marine Fisheries Policy

The Times of India , Friday, February 12, 2016
Correspondent : Sulogna Mehta
Visakhapatnam: The state of marine environment in India is under stress due to pollution and is one of the reasons for decline in fish stocks. Factors, such as effluent treatment on land, plastics in the sea and ghost fishing (use of abandoned fishing gear to catch fish) are equally affecting the fish stocks besides climate change, points out the first draft of the National Marine Fisheries Policy (NPMF 2016) that was released by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) on Thursday.

Commercial port development is one of the causes for erosion and accretion along the Indian coasts, affecting fisherman's livelihood. Hence a regulator is required to control such pollutants along with focused studies on climate change impacts on fish stocks, the draft said. The draft was released at the CMFRI stakeholder meet for three states - Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal that was held in Vizag on Thursday.

The NPMF has been formulated to ensure health and ecological integrity of oceanic wealth of India based on sustainable development, principle of subsidiarity, inter-generational equity and precautionary approach. While the primary concern of the policy will be the sustainability of marine resources, its specific goals will focus on employment and livelihoods, equity and equality, provision of food safety and national nutrition and creation of wealth and prosperity.

As per the NPMF draft, coastal and inshore marine resources are highly dependent on many inland water-bodies (estuaries, lakes and backwaters) for completing their life cycles. These water bodies are subject to anthropogenic pressures and their environmental quality has been compromised, affecting stocks of several important marine fishery resources, particularly the high-value shrimps. Emphasis must be accorded to maintain ecological integrity of marine environment, so as to ensure that there's no adverse effect on the endangered, threatened or protected marine species.

Since marine fish resources are exhaustible, measures should be implemented to limit fishing through input and output controls, fleet size, fishing days and area of operation, engine horsepower, gear size, minimum mesh size, fishing in less exploited areas, creating fisheries management areas to ensure that resource depletion is contained.

Effective monitoring, control and surveillance regime for the marine fisheries sector need further strengthening. The general condition and hygiene of fishing harbours and fish markets in the country needs improvement to raise it to international standards.

The spread of fish meal plants, use of low-value fish in fish-feed industry and their overwhelming demand for small pelagics has already driven the valuable oil sardine stock to very low levels in some parts. The government also needs to control proliferation of fish meal plants, as per NPMF.

 
SOURCE : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/visakhapatnam/Pollution-is-eating-into-Indias-fish-stocks-finds-National-Marine-Fisheries-Policy/articleshow/50955022.cms
 


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