Nations in the Indian Ocean rim should opt for ecosystem based on fisheries management, a regional workshop here has suggested. The workshop on fisheries management concluded that such an approach to conserve the biodiversity and fishery resources is important for sustainable management of the industry in the region.

M. Srinath, former principal scientist of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, said that such practices are very crucial in the context of declining catches, profitability, socio-economic aspects and in combating the conflicts of interests between various fisheries zones.

He was addressing a session on ‘Fish stock assessment – An introduction’ at the ongoing workshop, organised by the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies and the Ministry of External Affairs.

The basic principle of the code of conduct of responsible fisheries is based on the maintenance of sustainable exploitation of resources.

earlier practices Most of the earlier practices were mainly based on the quantity and characteristics of catches and not considered the environmental parameters, earlier considered to be the static features.

But recent changes in marine environment due to climate change affected fishery resources drastically and this has led to incorporation of the ecosystem and its environmental characteristics in fisheries management practices, he said.

For the management of these resources, he said that perfect data base is needed for the stock assessment and to find out the maximum exploitable yield. The new mathematical models clearly predicted the stock assessment of fishery resources by incorporating the changes in temperature, salinity, carbon production, etc.

According to him, scientific and statistical approaches are necessary to control overfishing of mature and juvenile fishery resources.

The dynamics of the exploitable fishery resources can be expressed only on the basis of the correctness of data generated on the characteristics of fishery populations.

For this, data sharing between various fishery management agencies and institutes are necessary, he said.

sajeevkumar.v@thehindu.co.in

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