Chapter 15: Fisheries
On the Odisha coast lies Chilika, the largest brackish-water lagoon in Asia — a broad, shallow sheet of water fed by rivers at one end and joined to the Bay of Bengal by a single narrow mouth. Its wealth is fish and prawn, and its people have fished it for generations.
Through the 1990s the lagoon fell quiet. Sand carried by the sea slowly choked the mouth and pushed it kilometres off course, so less and less tidal water reached the lagoon. As the salt water thinned, the fish and prawn that need a blend of sea and river water thinned with it. Freshwater weeds spread across the surface. Catches fell, and the fishing families who depended on the lagoon fell with them.
Geographers, biologists and engineers measured the lagoon for years — its salinity, its depth, the slow drift of its sand. In September 2000 a new mouth was cut straight through the sand bar near Sipakuda, giving the sea a short, direct path in. Salt water surged back, the old gradient from fresh to salty was rebuilt, and within a few seasons the fish and prawn catch climbed sharply. Migratory fish that had vanished returned.
Chilika teaches the first lesson of fisheries: the catch is made not only of fish, but of the water that holds them.
Diagram
Fig. 15.0-1 Caption: A silting, wandering mouth starved Chilika of seawater; a new cut restored the salt, and the fish returned. Brief: Plan-view sketch of Chilika lagoon on the Odisha coast. Label the lagoon body, the feeder rivers entering from the land side, the sand bar separating lagoon from sea, the old silted mouth (drifted far along the bar) and the new mouth cut in 2000 near Sipakuda, and the Bay of Bengal. Show bold arrows of seawater flowing landward into the lagoon through the new mouth. Shade a gradient across the lagoon from fresher (river end) to more saline (near the mouths). Emphasise how the new mouth shortens the sea’s path into the lagoon.
15.1 Fisheries And Their Two Realms
Fishing is among the oldest of human occupations, older than farming. People fished the rivers and shallows long before they learned to sow a field. Fisheries is the activity of catching or rearing fish and other water animals, together with the resource base that supports it.
Fish matters because it is cheap, complete protein. A kilogram of fish carries protein comparable to meat, along with useful vitamins and oils, and it reaches people who can afford little else. Fishing also gives a living to millions of coastal and riverside families in India, most of them working with small boats and simple gear.
India draws its fish from two very different realms. Marine fisheries work the sea — the coastal waters, the shelf, and the deeper ocean beyond. Inland fisheries work the fresh and brackish water away from the open sea — rivers, canals, reservoirs, tanks, ponds, and the estuaries and lagoons along the coast. The two realms are fished by different people, with different boats, for different fish.
Flowchart
Fig. 15.1-1 Caption: India’s fisheries divide into two realms, and each divides again by where and how the fish are taken. Nodes: Fisheries → two realms → Marine (the sea) and Inland (fresh and brackish water); Marine → coastal fishing (close to shore); offshore fishing (farther out, over the shelf); deep-sea fishing (beyond the shelf); Inland → capture fisheries (wild fish taken from rivers, lakes and lagoons) and culture fisheries (fish reared in ponds and tanks — aquaculture)
A Resource That Grew, And Shifted
India is today among the world’s largest producers of fish — second or third, depending on the year and the source. Output has risen roughly twenty-fold since Independence, a steep and sustained climb.
More striking than the total is the change in its make-up. In 1950-51 the sea supplied most of India’s fish, and inland waters barely a third. Today the balance has reversed: inland waters yield about three-quarters of the catch, and the sea only about a quarter.
The table tells the story in numbers. Between 1950-51 and 2021-22 the total catch rose from 752 thousand tonnes to about 16,254 thousand tonnes — a rise of \(16{,}254 \div 752 \approx 21.6\) times. Over the same span the sea’s catch grew less than eightfold (\(4{,}127 \div 534 \approx 7.7\)), while the inland catch grew about fifty-fivefold (\(12{,}127 \div 218 \approx 55.6\)). By about 2000-01 the two realms had drawn level; inland has pulled decisively ahead since.
The reason for the reversal is the Blue Revolution — the planned expansion of India’s fish output, led above all by inland aquaculture (also called pisciculture), the deliberate breeding and rearing of fish in ponds and tanks rather than catching them from the wild. The sea’s wild stock has natural limits, so the marine catch has grown only slowly; pond fish farming, by contrast, can be expanded almost like a crop. Recent schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, launched in 2020, have continued this push.
15.1.1 Marine (Sea) Fisheries
Marine fishing depends on the continental shelf — the shallow, gently sloping, submerged rim of the landmass that fringes the coast, reaching down to roughly 200 metres before the sea floor plunges away. Sunlight reaches through this shallow water, food is plentiful, and it is here that most sea fish gather.
Sea fishing is carried on at three distances from the shore. Coastal fishing stays close in, in shallow water; offshore fishing works farther out over the shelf; and deep-sea fishing ventures beyond the shelf into deeper water. India does most of its marine fishing close to the shore and very little in the deep sea — a gap this chapter returns to.
India has a long coast for the purpose. The coastline runs to about 7,500 km, including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and the Lakshadweep Islands in the Arabian Sea; the mainland coast alone is about 6,100 km. The two mainland coasts — the western coast on the Arabian Sea and the eastern coast on the Bay of Bengal — do not fish equally, as a later section shows.
15.1.2 Inland (Fresh Water) Fisheries
Inland fisheries draw on every kind of water away from the open sea. Rivers and their tributaries, irrigation canals, the reservoirs held back by dams, natural lakes, and the countless tanks and ponds of the countryside all yield fish. So do the estuary (the mouth where a river widens and meets the tide), the backwaters and the coastal lagoon (a shallow coastal water body cut off from the sea by a bar or spit).
Much of this coastal inland water is brackish water — water that is neither fresh nor fully salt, but a mixture of the two, as in an estuary or a lagoon. Many valuable fish and prawn spend part of their lives in exactly this in-between water, which is why brackish lagoons and estuaries are among the most productive of all inland waters.
Inland fish reach us in two ways. Capture fisheries take wild fish from open natural waters — a river, a lake, a lagoon. Culture fisheries, by contrast, breed and rear fish deliberately in enclosed ponds and tanks, feeding and tending them until harvest, much as a farmer raises a crop. It is culture fisheries, above all pond aquaculture, that have driven India’s recent surge, and that explain why inland has overtaken the sea.
15.2 Conditions That Favour Fisheries
The catch is not spread evenly across the water. Some seas and rivers teem with fish; others are nearly empty. To understand why, do not start with the fish — start with what they eat, and work upward. Fish gather where their food gathers, and food gathers only where a few conditions meet.
Follow The Food
At the base of almost all life in water lies plankton — the vast drift of tiny plants and animals that float near the surface. Its plant form, phytoplankton, is fed on by its animal form, zooplankton, which is in turn eaten by small fish, which are eaten by larger fish. Where plankton is dense, fish are dense.
Phytoplankton are plants, and like all plants they need sunlight to grow. Sunlight reaches only the top layer of the water, so plankton can only flourish in shallow, sunlit seas — above the continental shelf, down to roughly 200 m. Below that, in the dark deep ocean, there is little plankton and therefore little food. The food chain runs as the flowchart below sets out.
Flowchart
Fig. 15.2-1 Caption: Sunlight at the surface feeds the whole chain, which is why fish crowd the shallow, sunlit shelf. Nodes: Sunlight into the sunlit surface water → phytoplankton (tiny drifting plants) grow → zooplankton (tiny drifting animals) eat them → small fish eat zooplankton → larger food fish eat small fish → the fishing catch. Depth check: water deeper than about 200 m? yes → sunlight fails → no phytoplankton → little food → few fish; no → sunlit shelf water → plankton-rich → fish gather.
This is why the great fishing grounds of the world, and the bulk of India’s own sea catch, lie over the shallow continental shelf near the coasts, and not in the vast, deep, open ocean.
The Right Water
Plankton, and most food fish, prefer cool to moderate water, roughly below 20 °C, and flourish in temperate and cool seas. Very warm tropical surface water holds less plankton. This is why the richest grounds on earth sit in cooler mid-latitude seas, and why the warm tropical water around India is, unit for unit, less crowded with fish than the cold seas of the north. India makes up for this less with exceptionally rich grounds than with a long coast and enormous inland waters.
Richness also depends on movement. The best grounds form where a warm current meets a cold one, or where deep water rises to the surface in a process called upwelling — the lifting of cold, deep water toward the surface, carrying nutrients up with it. This mixing pushes nutrients from below into the sunlit layer, sets off a burst of plankton, and the fish follow. India sees this along its west coast during the southwest monsoon, when cool, nutrient-rich water is drawn up toward the surface.
The Right Coast
Rivers wash minerals and salts off the land and carry them into the sea, and these nutrients feed plankton near the river mouths. So the coastal waters near the mouths of large rivers, and the estuaries and deltas around them, are often rich fishing grounds. In India this favours the nutrient-fed waters off the great deltas of the east coast.
The shape of the coast matters too. An indented coast — one broken by bays, inlets, creeks and estuaries — offers sheltered water where boats can shelter and where fishing villages, landing places and ports grow up naturally. A smooth, straight coast offers few such natural harbours. Along India’s creek-and-backwater stretches, landing places form on their own; along the straighter stretches, fishing leans more heavily on harbours that must be built.
The Human Side
Natural richness is only half the story. Whether a fishery actually develops depends just as much on people, in three ways.
The first is the market. Fish spoils quickly, so it must reach buyers fast. Where a large population eats fish and transport can carry it fresh, the fishery grows. Across India the appetite for fish is uneven: it is a staple along the coasts and in the eastern states, while in much of the interior many people eat little or no fish, often for dietary or religious reasons. The home market is therefore strong in some regions and thin in others.
The second is technology. Mechanised boats, ice, cold storage, freezing plants and quick transport let fishers go farther, catch more, and sell the fish before it rots. Where these are lacking, the catch stays small and local. The third is labour: catching, cleaning, drying, salting and canning fish are all labour-intensive, so communities with fishing skills and traditions are the ones that sustain the industry.
15.3 Types Of Fishing
Fishing can be sorted in two different ways, and it is worth keeping them apart. One asks where in the water the fish live — near the surface or down at the bottom. The other asks how far from the shore the fishing is done — close in, or far out. The two questions are independent: a single trip close to shore may catch both surface fish and bottom fish at once. The cross-section below sets out both axes together.
Diagram
Fig. 15.3-1 Caption: The sea from shore to deep — where the fish live, and how far out the boats go. Brief: Cross-section of the sea with the coast on the left. Show the land sloping into a gently shelving continental shelf, then a shelf edge at about 200 m, then a steep drop to the deep ocean on the right. Shade the shallow sunlit surface layer. Mark two zones by distance from shore: an inshore zone near the coast (shallow; show a small boat) and an offshore or deep-sea zone beyond the shelf edge (show a large vessel). Draw pelagic fish as shoals near the surface and demersal fish near the sea floor. Mark the 200 m depth line. Label ‘not to scale’.
15.3.1 Pelagic And Demersal Fishing
Pelagic fish are fish that live and feed in the upper, open water near the surface. They are usually small, swim in large shoals, and move about with the seasons, so pelagic fishing tends to be a seasonal chase after moving shoals. They feed on the plankton that gathers in the sunlit surface layer, which is where they and their catchers must be. Oil sardine, mackerel and anchovy are the pelagic mainstays of India’s coasts.
Demersal fish live near the sea floor at the bottom of the shallower seas, often at depths of about 40 m where some sunlight still reaches. They feed on small animals on or near the bottom, rather than on surface plankton. Cod is the most famous demersal fish of the world’s cold seas; India’s demersal catch runs more to soles, catfish and croakers. Demersal fish are sometimes called white fish.
The two differ in one plain thing — the level of the water they occupy — and that difference decides how they are caught. Pelagic shoals are taken in nets worked near the surface; demersal fish are reached by dragging nets along the sea floor. Both, though, are marine food fish of the shelf, and a boat may land both on the same trip.
15.3.2 Inshore And Deep-Sea Fishing
Inshore fishing is done close to the shore, in shallow, sheltered coastal water and the lower reaches of rivers, usually within a few kilometres of the coast. It uses small boats, many of them non-mechanised, that go out and return the same day, and it is the work of the largest number of fishers, including part-time ones. The catch supplies the family, the village or the nearby market. Almost all of India’s marine catch is landed inshore in this way.
Deep-sea fishing reaches far out, over the deeper waters beyond the edge of the continental shelf. It needs large mechanised or factory vessels that stay at sea for days at a time, with room to store, freeze or even can the fish on board, and so it demands heavy investment. It is a major activity in the world’s leading fishing nations, but in India it is barely developed, and the country’s offshore and deep waters remain largely untapped — a gap whose reasons the chapter takes up later.
Inshore waters also yield shellfish — water animals that carry a shell, both crustaceans such as prawn, crab and lobster, and molluscs such as clams and oysters. Prawn is the most valuable of these for India, because much of it is exported and earns a high price abroad. So the difference between inshore and deep-sea fishing is not the kind of fish but the reach of the effort: one stays near and small, the other goes far and costly.
15.4 Fishing Methods
In early days fish were caught by hand, by spear, or with a bow and arrow. Modern commercial fishing uses traps, lines or nets, backed by engines and electronics that track fish day and night. Four methods do most of the work: drifting, trawling, seining and lining. Each is shaped to where its target fish live. Nets worked near the surface take the pelagic shoals; nets dragged along the bottom take the demersal fish; lines spread baited hooks for the larger, scattered fish.
Diagram
Fig. 15.4-1 Caption: The four main ways to catch fish, each shaped to where the fish are. Brief: Four small labelled panels in one figure, drawn roughly to scale with a small boat for reference. (a) Drift net: a net hanging vertically like a curtain just below the surface, floats along the top edge, weights along the bottom, one fish caught by its gills; show the net drifting freely with no anchor. (b) Trawl net: a large bag-shaped net towed along the sea floor behind a boat, its mouth held open by otter boards, with an arrow showing the towing direction and the narrow closed ‘cod end’ where fish collect. (c) Purse seine: a wall of net thrown around a surface shoal, its bottom being drawn closed like a drawstring purse; arrows show the closing direction. (d) Long-line: a single long main line, buoyed at intervals, with many short branch lines each ending in a baited hook.
15.4.1 Drifting
A drift net hangs vertically in the water like a curtain, held up by floats along its upper edge and pulled down by weights along its lower, set just a few metres below the surface. It is not anchored — it drifts freely with the current. A fish swimming into it pushes its head through the mesh but cannot force its body through, and its gills catch on the net so it cannot back out.
Drifting takes pelagic surface fish such as herring, sardine, mackerel and anchovy. The powerful boats that work large drift nets are called drifters.
15.4.2 Trawling
A trawl net is a large, bag-shaped net whose mouth is held open by boards, called otter boards, or by beams. It is dragged slowly through the water behind a boat known as a trawler. Dragged along the sea floor, it sweeps up demersal bottom fish such as cod, haddock and soles, which collect in the narrow closed tail, the cod-end.
Trawling is the most efficient way to take large quantities of bottom fish, and the biggest factory trawlers freeze and process the catch on board so they can stay far out for long spells. It is heavy on fuel and gear, so it needs sizeable mechanised vessels.
15.4.3 Seining
A seine net works by surrounding a shoal rather than entangling single fish. In its simplest form, the haul seine, a long wall of net is played out around the fish and then dragged in to the shore at both ends.
The more powerful form is the purse seine. A wall of net is thrown around a shoal in open water, and then the bottom of the net is drawn together like the mouth of a drawstring purse, trapping the fish inside. Purse seining suits the dense surface shoals of pelagic fish, and much of India’s mechanised sardine and mackerel catch is taken this way.
15.4.4 Lining
Line fishing, or lining, catches fish on baited hooks, and it was the main commercial method before nets took over. A hand-line carries one or a few hooks, cast from the deck and hauled up when a fish bites.
A long-line is far larger: a single main line, kilometres long and buoyed at intervals, carries hundreds or even thousands of short branch lines, each ending in a baited hook, spread across a stretch of sea. Lines take the larger, more scattered fish that do not gather in tight shoals, and many of India’s small boats still fish by hand-line where nets and engines are beyond their means.
15.5 Major Fishing Areas Of India
India’s fishing is really two overlapping geographies laid over the same country. One is a marine fringe that hugs the coasts; the other is an inland spread that reaches deep into the interior. The map below shows both together.
Map
Map 15.1 Caption: India’s fisheries fall into a marine fringe along the coasts and an inland spread across the interior. Brief: Political outline map showing the full extent of India as officially defined by the Government of India, including Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, with international boundaries as officially recognised. Shade a marine fishing belt along the entire coastline (Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean), drawn broader along the west coast than the east. Mark the major fishable rivers used for inland fishing — Ganga, Brahmaputra, Godavari, Krishna, Mahanadi, Narmada, Tapi — as lines. Indicate deltaic and brackish fishing areas at the major river mouths of the east coast and the coastal backwaters and lagoons. Include the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. Provide a key showing: marine belt, rivers, deltaic and inland fishing areas. Do not label individual catch figures.
The Marine Belt
India’s marine catch comes from the coastal states that face the sea. The west coast, along the Arabian Sea, lands the larger share — by common estimate about three-quarters of the marine catch — while the east coast, along the Bay of Bengal, brings in the rest. Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka lead on the west, joined by Kerala; Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal lead on the east.
The west coast’s lead is not an accident. Its continental shelf is broader, especially off Gujarat and Maharashtra, giving more shallow, sunlit, productive water. To this the southwest monsoon adds the seasonal upwelling met earlier, which feeds a burst of plankton and the shoals that live on it.
The Inland Spread
Inland fishing does not need a coast, so it is spread across the whole country. It draws on the great river plains of the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, on the reservoirs held behind dams, and on the countless tanks and ponds of the villages. This is why landlocked states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh, with no sea of their own, are still notable fish producers, living entirely on rivers, canals, tanks and ponds.
The heaviest inland production, though, sits in the eastern and southern states, where water is abundant and fish is a daily food. Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal stand out, the first on the strength of large-scale fish farming, the second on its dense delta and its long habit of freshwater fishing.
The Overall Pattern
Put the two geographies together and the leading fish states are those that combine a productive coast with a strong inland fishery, or that have built vast aquaculture. Andhra Pradesh is now the single largest fish-producing state in India, drawing on both its coast and, above all, its inland fish farms. It is one of the two states the chapter now examines in detail; the other is Kerala, whose small but intensely worked coast makes it the most heavily fished stretch of the country.
15.6 Two Fishing States
Two states stand out above all others in India’s fisheries, and they are well worth setting side by side, because each leads for an opposite reason. Andhra Pradesh is the largest producer by sheer scale; Kerala is the most heavily fished by intensity. Comparing them shows that a strong fishery can be built in more than one way.
15.6.1 Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh is the single largest fish-producing state in India, accounting by recent counts for close to a third of the national total. It has a coast of nearly 1,000 km on the Bay of Bengal, with marine fishing centres at Visakhapatnam — one of India’s major fishing harbours — as well as Kakinada and Machilipatnam.
Yet the state’s lead does not rest mainly on the sea. It rests on inland and brackish-water fish farming. The deltas of the Godavari and the Krishna give it flat, water-rich lowland, threaded with canals and tanks and warm the year round. On this land, farmers rear freshwater carp in ponds and, along the brackish coastal belt, farm prawn in large quantities. Much of that prawn is exported, and Andhra Pradesh has become the country’s leading producer of farmed shrimp.
Andhra Pradesh, then, is a fishery built on land as much as on water — more ponds in the delta than boats on the bay.
15.6.2 Kerala
Kerala has a coast of only about 590 km, far shorter than Andhra Pradesh’s, and yet it is the most intensely fished stretch of the whole country. Its strength is not the length of its coast but how hard every kilometre of it is worked.
Several conditions come together here. The coast is deeply indented, laced with backwaters, lagoons and estuaries, which give sheltered water, natural landing places, and rich brackish and inland fishing alongside the marine catch. Offshore, the southwest-monsoon upwelling is strongest off this southwest coast, feeding the plankton that draws in shoals of oil sardine and mackerel. At home, fish is a dietary staple, so there is a strong and steady local market. And Kerala has India’s best-developed fishing infrastructure — mechanised boats, a large share of the country’s fish-processing capacity for freezing, cold storage and canning, and Kochi as a major fishing harbour and export centre, with Kollam, Kozhikode, Kannur and Vizhinjam among the other leading centres.
So the two leaders lead in opposite ways. Andhra Pradesh spreads its fishery across a vast, flat, watery delta and farms fish and prawn by the pondful. Kerala concentrates its fishery on a short, rich, well-served coast and squeezes the most from every stretch. Scale against intensity — two routes to the same top rank.
15.7 Problems Affecting Fishing In India
For all its long coast and rich inland waters, India’s fishing — and especially its marine and deep-sea side — is worked well below its potential. A set of problems holds it back, some coming from nature and some from the way the industry is built.
The Monsoon Closes The Season
Marine fishing along India’s coast cannot go on all year. For several months the southwest monsoon whips up strong winds and tropical cyclones, and the sea turns too rough for the small boats most fishers use. So fishing stops for weeks at a stretch, and the crews wait ashore. An official fishing ban, timed to the fish breeding season, also closes part of the year on purpose. The result is a stop-start fishery that idles boats and crews for a spell each year.
There is a deeper irony here. The very monsoon that enriches the west-coast water through upwelling — the season of the richest shoals — is also the season when the sea is too dangerous to work. Nature offers the fish and takes back the chance to catch them in the same breath.
Small Boats, Short Reach
Even in the calm season, most Indian fishers work small boats, many of them without engines. These cannot travel far or stay out overnight, so they fish close to shore — within roughly 10 km, in shallow water — and return by night. As a result the offshore and deep-sea grounds beyond the shelf are barely touched, and India’s deep-sea catch stays far below what its waters could yield. The crowded inshore belt, meanwhile, is worked harder and harder.
Spoilage And The Cold Chain
Two natural facts squeeze the catch. India’s tropical heat spoils fish within hours, so it cannot be kept or carried far without ice, cold storage and freezing — and that equipment adds cost and raises the price. And India’s coast has fewer of the deep bays, sheltered inlets and long estuaries that make natural fishing harbours; many stretches are straight and must rely on harbours that have to be built.
Behind the shore the network is thin: too few landing centres, freezing plants, cold stores and canneries, and weak transport and organised markets, so fish often rots before it reaches distant buyers. Demand is uneven as well. Fish is a staple along the coasts and in the eastern states, but much of the interior eats little of it, so the home market is patchy rather than nationwide.
Overfishing And Pollution
Where fishing has mechanised, a new problem appears: overfishing, the taking of fish faster than the stock can breed and replace itself, together with the netting of immature fish before they have spawned. Both thin the stock. Coastal pollution — from cities, industry and farm run-off draining into the sea — harms fish and their breeding grounds too. These pressures can turn a renewable resource into a shrinking one, and they set up the need for conservation that the next section takes up.
15.8 Fish Conservation
15.8.1 The Need For Conservation
Fish is a renewable resource — one that nature renews within a human timescale, replacing itself by breeding, as long as it is not taken faster than it renews. Handled with care, a fishery can go on yielding for ever; handled carelessly, it can be emptied.
For a long time people believed the sea was inexhaustible — that no amount of fishing could seriously dent its stocks. Through the 20th century that belief broke down. A growing population wanted more fish, and better boats, nets and fish-finding gear let fishers take far more, and far faster. Fishing began to outrun breeding.
The result was overfishing and the netting of immature fish, which depleted stocks in many parts of the world. In this state, fishing behaves like a robber industry, much like mining: take faster than nature can replace, and the resource dwindles. But unlike a mine, a fish stock can renew itself — so the whole aim of conservation is to keep the taking within the rate of breeding.
The signs of failure are plain. Fishers must go farther out for a smaller catch, and the food and the livelihoods that rest on fish come under threat, while pollution of rivers and seas makes matters worse. And because fish cross freely between national waters, no single country can protect a stock that many countries fish — conservation has to be practised together.
15.8.2 Methods Of Conservation
No one measure is enough on its own; several, used together, can keep a fishery healthy.
Restocking overfished waters — replenishing depleted areas by moving young fish in from well-stocked waters, or by introducing suitable new species, so that the population can recover.
Checking indiscriminate fishing — the careless taking of fish without limit, including immature fish and fish in the breeding season. It is curbed by minimum-size rules, by mesh sizes that let young fish slip through, by closed seasons such as the monsoon breeding ban, and by penalties for offenders.
Breeding fish artificially — hatcheries fertilise and rear eggs under protection and then release the young into streams and the sea; careful crossbreeding can also strengthen the stock.
Protecting fish from pollution — since fish cannot live in fouled water, keeping rivers, coasts and seas clean is itself a form of conservation.
International agreement — because fish know no boundaries, nations must agree jointly to limit overfishing and indiscriminate fishing, so that one country’s restraint is not undone by another’s.
Research and development — studying fish habits, food, breeding, habitats and migration, so that both the catching and the conserving can be done wisely.
15.9 Summary
A fishery is the catching or rearing of fish together with the water and stock that support it. India draws fish from two realms — marine fisheries from the sea and inland fisheries from rivers, tanks, reservoirs, ponds and brackish waters — and is among the world’s largest producers.
India’s catch grew from about 0.75 million tonnes in 1950-51 to more than 16 million tonnes by the early 2020s. Inland output overtook marine around 2000-01 and now supplies roughly three-quarters of the total, thanks to the rise of fish farming under the Blue Revolution.
Fish gather where their food gathers. The food chain rests on plankton, which needs sunlight and so grows only over the shallow, sunlit continental shelf, down to about 200 m. Cool water, the meeting of currents and upwelling, river-borne nutrients and an indented coast all enrich a fishing ground; market, technology and labour then decide whether it develops.
Fishing is sorted two ways: by where the fish live — pelagic (surface) or demersal (bottom) — and by how far out it is done — inshore (near) or deep-sea (far). The two axes are independent.
Four methods do most of the work: drifting with drift nets for surface shoals, trawling with bottom-dragged trawl nets for demersal fish, seining with purse seines around pelagic shoals, and lining with baited long-lines for scattered fish.
India’s marine catch clings to the coasts, with the west coast landing the larger share on the strength of a broader shelf and monsoon upwelling. Inland fishing spreads across the whole interior, so even landlocked states produce fish. Andhra Pradesh is the single largest producer.
The two leading states reach the top by opposite routes. Andhra Pradesh leads through large-scale inland fish and prawn farming on the Godavari–Krishna delta; Kerala leads through intense mechanised sea fishing on a rich, indented, upwelling coast, backed by heavy processing and export.
Fishing in India is worked below its potential. The monsoon closes the season with storms and a breeding ban; small non-mechanised boats leave the deep sea untapped; tropical heat spoils the catch and the cold chain and markets are weak; and overfishing, immature catch and pollution thin the stocks.
Fish is a renewable resource only if taken within the rate at which it breeds. Conservation is needed because overfishing has depleted stocks, and its methods — restocking, checking indiscriminate fishing through size, mesh and season limits, hatcheries, pollution control, international agreement and research — must be practised together, and globally, because fish cross borders.
Flowchart
Fig. 15.9-1 Caption: The fishery as one system — from sunlight to the catch, and round to the conservation that keeps it going. Nodes: Sunlight and river-borne nutrients → plankton blooms in the shallow, sunlit shelf water → fish gather to feed → India harvests them in two realms: marine (inshore, offshore, deep-sea) and inland (capture, culture or aquaculture, brackish) → caught with drift nets, trawls, seines and lines → the catch feeds people and earns export income → but the monsoon, small boats, a weak cold chain, overfishing and pollution limit and threaten it → conservation (size and season limits, hatcheries, clean water, international agreement) keeps the taking within the breeding rate → the stock renews → back to fish gather to feed.
What This Chapter Cannot Tell You
A national total, such as India’s 16-million-tonne catch, hides which coast, state, river or district it came from, and whether the stock behind it is healthy or already failing.
Figures given for a whole decade or a single census year smooth over the sharp swings that one monsoon, one cyclone or one fishing ban can cause from year to year.
Estimates of untapped ‘potential’ in the deep sea assume the fish are there for the taking; they cannot promise those distant stocks will hold once the boats finally reach them.
15.10 Key Terms
Aquaculture — the deliberate farming of fish and other water animals in ponds or tanks; also called pisciculture.
Blue Revolution — the rapid rise in India’s fish output, driven mainly by inland fish farming and backed by government schemes.
Brackish water — water that is a mixture of fresh and salt, saltier than a river but less salty than the sea, as in estuaries and lagoons.
Capture fisheries — fishing that takes wild fish from natural waters such as rivers, lakes and reservoirs, rather than farming them.
Continental shelf — the gently sloping, shallow sea floor fringing the land, reaching to about 200 m before the steep drop to the deep ocean.
Culture fisheries — inland fishing based on farmed fish reared in ponds and tanks (that is, aquaculture), as opposed to catching wild fish.
Deep-sea fishing — fishing far out over the deeper waters beyond the continental shelf, needing large vessels that stay at sea for days.
Demersal fish — fish that live and feed near the sea floor at the bottom of shallow seas, such as cod and soles.
Drift net — a net hung vertically near the surface and drifting freely, which catches surface fish by their gills.
Fishery — the activity of catching or rearing fish, together with the water body and the stock of fish that support it.
Indented coast — a coast broken by bays, inlets, creeks and estuaries, giving sheltered water for boats, landing places and ports.
Indiscriminate fishing — the careless taking of fish without limit, including immature fish and fish in the breeding season.
Inland fisheries — fishing in the fresh and brackish waters on land — rivers, canals, reservoirs, lakes, tanks, ponds, estuaries and lagoons.
Inshore fishing — fishing close to the shore in shallow, sheltered water, usually within a few kilometres of the coast.
Long-line — a single long fishing line, buoyed at intervals, carrying many baited hooks spread across a stretch of sea.
Marine fisheries — fishing in the sea, from the shallow coastal water out to the deep open ocean.
Overfishing — taking fish faster than the stock can breed and replace itself.
Pelagic fish — fish that live and feed in the upper, open water near the surface, such as sardine and mackerel.
Plankton — the drift of tiny plants (phytoplankton) and animals (zooplankton) floating near the water surface, forming the base of the food chain.
Renewable resource — a resource that nature renews within a human timescale, provided it is used no faster than it renews.
Seine net — a net that catches fish by surrounding a shoal; a purse seine closes its base like a drawstring purse to trap them.
Shellfish — water animals that carry a shell, including crustaceans such as prawn and crab, and molluscs such as clams and oysters.
Trawl net — a large, bag-shaped net dragged along the sea floor to catch demersal bottom fish.
Upwelling — the rising of cold, deep water toward the surface, bringing up nutrients that feed a bloom of plankton.
15.11 Points to Ponder
India’s fish now comes mostly from ponds that people stock and feed, not from wild shoals in the sea. Has the country solved the problem of overfishing by turning to fish farming, or only shifted the pressure off the ocean and onto its land and fresh water?
The southwest monsoon both enriches the west-coast sea through upwelling and makes it too rough and dangerous to fish. If the richest season is also the closed season, is the monsoon a friend or an enemy of the west-coast fisher?
Fish is called a renewable resource, yet fishing is described as a ‘robber industry’ like mining. What single thing decides whether a fishery behaves like a resource that lasts for ever or like a mine that runs out?
Andhra Pradesh grows its fish in delta ponds while Kerala hunts them in a rich sea, yet both lead the country. If you had to make a third state a leading fish producer, would you copy Andhra Pradesh or Kerala — and what about the place itself would decide your choice?
A map can shade a whole coastal state as a ‘fishing area’ and still tell you nothing about whether its fishers are prospering or its stocks are collapsing. What would you need to add to such a map before it could tell you that?
A forest can be fenced and a mine can be owned, but the sea’s fish move freely and belong to no one until they are caught. Does this make a fish stock harder to conserve than a forest or a mine, and why?
15.12 Objective Questions
- The richest fishing grounds lie over the continental shelf mainly because — [1 mark]
- the water there is the deepest
- sunlight reaches through, so plankton can grow
- the water there is the warmest
- rivers cannot reach it
- Which of the following is a demersal fish? [1 mark]
- oil sardine
- mackerel
- cod
- anchovy
- The single largest fish-producing state in India is — [1 mark]
- Kerala
- West Bengal
- Gujarat
- Andhra Pradesh
- A purse seine is best suited to catching — [1 mark]
- bottom-dwelling demersal fish
- dense surface shoals of pelagic fish
- scattered fish in the deep sea
- shellfish on the sea floor
- Assertion (A): Inland fish production in India overtook marine production around 2000-01. Reason (R): Fish farming in ponds and tanks can be expanded far faster than the wild sea catch. [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true but R is false.
- A is false but R is true.
- Assertion (A): Marine fishing along much of India’s coast stops for part of the year. Reason (R): The southwest monsoon brings strong winds and cyclones that make the sea too rough for small boats. [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true but R is false.
- A is false but R is true.
- Match each term in Column A with its correct description in Column B. [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Upwelling | i. dragged along the sea floor to catch demersal fish |
| b. Drift net | ii. a mixture of fresh and salt water |
| c. Brackish water | iii. cold, nutrient-rich water rising to the surface |
| d. Trawl net | iv. hangs like a curtain and catches surface fish by their gills |
Fill in the blank: Fish is a ________ resource, because it renews itself by breeding as long as it is not taken faster than it renews. [1 mark]
State whether true or false: India’s west coast lands a smaller share of the marine catch than its east coast. [1 mark]
15.13 Check Your Concepts
Define a fishery. Name the two realms from which India draws its fish. [2 marks]
State two problems that hold back the development of deep-sea fishing in India. [2 marks]
Differentiate between pelagic and demersal fish. [3 marks]
Give reasons why the west coast of India lands a larger share of the marine catch than the east coast. [3 marks]
With the help of the food chain, explain why most of the world’s fish are caught over the continental shelf rather than in the deep open ocean. [4 marks]
Describe how a purse seine and a trawl net each work, and state which kind of fish each is used to catch. [4 marks]
Explain the process of upwelling, and describe how it makes the west coast of India rich in fish during the monsoon season. [4 marks]
Compare Andhra Pradesh and Kerala as fishing states, explaining the main factors that have shaped the development of fishing in each. [6 marks]
‘Fish is a renewable resource, yet it can be exhausted like a mine.’ Discuss this statement with reference to overfishing and the need for conservation of fish in India. [6 marks]
15.14 Map, Diagram & Data Interpretation
Using Table 15.1: (a) calculate the inland share of India’s total fish catch in 2000-01, to the nearest whole per cent; (b) work out by how many times India’s total catch grew between 1950-51 and 2021-22. Show your working in each case. [4 marks]
Study Fig. 15.2-1 (the marine food chain). (a) Name the organism at the base of the chain. (b) Explain what would happen to the fish catch if sunlight could no longer reach the surface water. [3 marks]
Look at Fig. 15.3-1 (the sea from shore to deep). (a) State where an inshore fisher and a deep-sea vessel would each work. (b) State one thing this diagram does not tell you about the fish. [4 marks]
On an outline map of India: (a) shade the marine fishing belt and mark whether it is broader along the west coast or the east coast; (b) mark and label Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, the two leading fish-producing states. [4 marks]