Annual Report 2016-17 of ICAR - Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute, Barrackpore, Kolkata - 700120

Abstract

Inland open water resources in the form of rivers, estuaries, floodplain wetlands, reservoirs, backwaters and lagoons are invaluable aquatic resources of the country offering tremendous scope for fisheries development through knowledge based scientific management. India is blessed with vast area of inland open waters in terms of 45,000 km of rivers, 0.3 million ha of estuaries, 0.19 million ha of backwaters and lagoons, 3.51 million ha of reservoirs, 0.354 million ha of floodplain wetlands and 0.72 million ha of upland lakes. The present contribution from inland open water resources is 1.3 million tonnes with a percentage contribution of around 21% to the total inland fish production. The estimated demand of fish by 2025 in the Indian domestic market would be around 16 million tonnes (MT) against the present production of 9.58 MT coming from inland (65%) and marine (35%) sectors. In this context, the projected second blue revolution of the country demands fish production from inland open water bodies as a promising option for providing high quality protein food, livelihood to the rural populace and doubling the fisher's income. However, most of these waters are in a process of degradation due to increasing anthropogenic activities and have lost their pristine characteristics, which in turn affected the ecological services and ultimately natural fish stocks and biodiversity. This necessitates proper resource management, based on sound and informed decision making and location specific technological interventions for protecting the goods and ecological services to sustain the fisheries. In this context, ICAR-CIFRI has considerably accomplished significant scientific and technological milestones towards generating current knowledge base through interdisciplinary research for enabling sustainability of their ecosystem services and fisheries.