By-catch of the shrimp fishery in India

Abstract

Every year as much as 21 million tonnes of edible marine fish are thrown away at sea by shrimp trawlers, which amounts to roughly the same quantity of fish eaten annually by the people of the developing countries in a world of increasing hunger we cannot afford to indulge in the luxury of this practice of dumping the trash fish over-board the fishing vessel in this connection a study was made to understand the shrimping by-catch and its utilisation in this country and the results are reported here. The present study makes it clear that nothing much from the shrimp trawler catches is wasted in india and almost all the fishes, which are termed trash fish and discarded over board the vessel in some of the developed countries, are utilised either for human consumption or as fish meal and fish manure. However it is to be pointed out that the handling, processing and utilization of the fish catches, need further improvement.