Fisheries Industry of India!

Water constitutes about five-seventh of the earth by volume. It includes oceans, seas, rivers, jheels, ponds, pools and drains.

The vastness and distribution are mysterious. Water has been used as a means of navigation, commerce, shipping, adventure, discovery of lands, for the building of empires, and for the movement of warships, submarines etc.

It has also been used for obtaining petroleum and gases, but its utilization in the form of a productive place for edible goods, especially fishes, is perhaps the oldest one known to human beings.

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The increasing population of the world has threatened mankind in several ways amongst which the most important one is the food problem. Fish being a valuable and easily accessible source of food, rich in protein content, can be used to overcome the food problem to a certain extent.

India has abundant marine and inland fish resources. The Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea all along the coast, and a large number of islands with their mangrove swamps provides about C. 4,667 kilometers of coast line and a continental shelf of 2,59,000 sq. km., as a cultural ground for marine fishes.

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Vast stretches of fresh water consisting of rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs, tanks, ponds and paddy fields offer scope for inland fisheries. The total surface for inland fisheries run in several million acres, including about C. 27,360 km. of principal rivers and their tributaries and a length of C. 1,12,650 km. of irrigation canal.

The per capita consumption of fish in India is estimated to/be 1.52 kg. per year, which is very poor and should at least be increased ten times. The vastness of resources can very easily provide scope to increase the output of fish production, provided fisheries are developed on scientific techniques. Pisci-culture is the culture of fishes by employing artificial means with scientific techniques.

Out of about 1,000,000 tons annual production of fish in India, about 66-70% is obtained from the sea and the rest from various sources of fresh water. Fisheries resources in India can be broadly divided into three main types namely Inland fisheries, Estuarine fisheries and Marine fisheries. In this Chapter we will give much -emphasis on inland fisheries because pisci-culture is almost restricted to inland water.

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