Decadal Trends of Indian Demersal Fisheries

Fisheries sector plays an important role in the overall socio-economic development of India. India is one of the major fish producing countries in the world contributing over 3% of both marine and freshwater fishes of the world production. Marine fishes, based on their depth-wise distribution are grouped mainly as pelagic and demersal, the former occupying surface and subsurface waters and the latter the neritic areas in the continental shelf. Demersal fishes are those fishes which can either rest on the sea floor or which can float in the water column just above the sea floor. The demersal fish resources of India include the elasmobranchs, eels, major perches, threadfin breams, silverbellies, sciaenids, lizardfishes, pomfrets, bulls eye, catfishes, flatfishes, goatfish and white fish. There is a significant contribution by the demersal fishes to the total Indian marine fish landings. When compared to the pelagic resources, proper exploitation of the demersal finfishes in India has been initiated since 1960-62 period. With the introduction of mechanized bottom trawling the exploitation of demersal finfishes attained a 2.7 fold increase reaching 0.52 million tonnes in the late eighties from 0.08million tonnes during the late fifties. In 2017, the demersal fish production of India reached new heights with a peak annual average landing of 1 million tonne which is almost an increase of 12.5 fold from the late fifties. The annual average landings of demersal finfishes along the Indian coast during 2010-2015 was accounted to 0.95 million tonnes contributing 26.32% to the total landings. However, the catch share of demersal finfishes during the last 35 years indicates that the contribution of demersal finfishes to the total Indian marine landings is decreasing over the years. The maximum share was reported in 1983 with 33% contribution and the lowest share was in 1989.