Success of Inland Fisheries in India

Traditionally, the output of marine fisheries used to be higher than that of inland fisheries. However, since 1991, India’s Inland Fish production has increased gradually. In 2000-01, inland fisheries overtook marine fisheries in terms of production and the trend has endured since then. While the marine fish capture has increased only by about 36 per cent since then; there was a 234 per cent rise in the inland fish production.   The situation today is that the marine fisheries sector has virtually ceased to grow even as inland fisheries continue to expand. Fish catch (capture fisheries) from rivers and other open water bodies in the inland fisheries sector and from the oceans in the marine fisheries sector are either stagnant or declining. Thus, the growth of the fisheries sector in India is mainly being sustained by inland aquaculture (fish farming).

• At present share of Inland fish production in India’s total fish production is more than marine. Since 1991.
• Punjab and Haryana are two largest states in India in terms of freshwater fish production.

The success of Freshwater aquaculture is because of the efforts done by the scientists for developing technologies for scientific aquaculture, and the efforts of the farmers for making full use of new techniques for producing bumper fish harvests. The adoption of scientific fish farming practices has led to an over five-fold increase in the mean national fish productivity. The other factors helping the Inland aquaculture in India are the burgeoning consumer demand, convenient marketing and good returns.