Challenges of illegal, unreported and unregulated fisheries in Indian waters: Plausible mitigation measures

Abstract

Marine fisheries sector provides not only a major source of high-quality animal protein but also ensures food security for fish-consuming populations at reasonable costs. With ~200000 fishing crafts, including mechanised, motorised, and non-motorised crafts, marine fishing, landing, and sales activities employ close to 4 million fisherfolk in recent years. India, with a mainland coast length of over 7000 km and 3000 km of island coastline, is among the top 10 marine fishing nations in the world. The annual contribution of marine fisheries to India's GDP is about 1.1 %, and 5.4 % of agricultural GDP. India, being a leading seafood exporter, the marine export earnings accounted for about 3.5 % (º 9.30 billion US$) of total exports in 2021. Notably, there has been a double-digit average annual growth rate of 10.87 % since 2015. Using the relevant datasets of 1950–2023 marine fish landings, this paper attempts to compile information on reported, unreported, and discarded catches. In addition to adverse climate change impacts, illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and coral reef degradation are crushing the nearshore fisheries. To provide a reasonable inference on IUU fishing aspects, literature-based data of Indian oil sardine and Indian mackerel, together accounting for close to 25 % of total landings, along with their pertinent biological characteristics, are used to showcase the IUU fishing for 2000–2023. A careful estimate reveals a revenue loss of over Rs 4 billion to the state of Kerala alone from unreported and discarded catches of Indian oil sardine and Indian mackerel. In view of the SDG 14 target of the subsequent withdrawal of diesel/fuel subsidies, a few steps, in particular strategies for offshore patrolling and the modification of the Marine Regulation Act to revise the minimum legal mesh size of certain gears that could reduce overall IUU, are discussed.