"The world's fish sector may become a victim of its own success." This is the word of caution from the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute in its latest outlook report on the likely fisheries scenario in 2020. Indeed, this could be as true for Indian fisheries as for global ones.
The only silver lining as far as India is concerned is that the untapped potential of fisheries -- both marine and inland -- is still quite substantial and can probably meet the growing needs, provided it is exploited in a sustainable manner.
Caution is called for to ensure that the already over-exploited sources of marine fisheries are not strained further and that fresh initiatives are confined to tapping the vast unexploited sector of the exclusive economic zone.
Where inland fisheries are concerned, enormous development potential exists, but environmental issues need to be treated with care.
At the global level, the appetite for fish has doubled in the past 30 years. Much of the fresh demand has come from developing countries due to increases in both population and income levels. In the developed countries, fish consumption has stagnated due to stable populations.
On the production front, the fish catches from the wild stocks in marine and freshwater sources continued to expand rapidly in the 1970s and the 1980s.
This was because of expanding fishing fleets, new fishing technologies and increased investments in this sector. But by the late 1980s, the resources of fisheries were either fully exploited or over-exploited, and growth from wild fisheries slowed.
It was aquaculture (artificial rearing of fish in natural or specially-created water bodies) that continued to drive production growth to meet the rising demand.
The boom in aquaculture has been rather spectacular in developing countries, including India. Today, aquaculture accounts for over 30 per cent of total world fish production, against just 7 per cent in the early 1970s.
Production from aquaculture has grown at an annual rate of over 13.3 per cent in the developing countries, against merely 2.7 per cent in the developed ones.
In India, too, output growth in inland fisheries has perceptibly outpaced that in the marine fisheries. In 1960, the production of inland fisheries was just over one-fourth (280,000 tonnes) of the marine output (880,000 tonnes).
By 1999-2000, inland output caught up with that of marine, with both sectors reporting an almost identical catch of about 2.8 million tonnes each. The inland capture has gone up even more since then.
Significantly, the traditionally non-fish-consuming states such as Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and even a water-scarce state like Rajasthan, have also taken to aquaculture in a big way.
While UP produced over 225,000 tonnes of fish in 2002, Punjab and Haryana bagged 58,000 tonnes and 34,500 tonnes, respectively, that year. Rajasthan, too, had over 14,000 tonnes of locally grown fish for consumption.
However, there are some disconcerting trends in marine fisheries as well as aquaculture that require looking into and perhaps even policy intervention.
In the case of ocean fishing, for instance, the east coast accounts only for about 30 per cent of the total marine catch, although it has a much longer coastline. And this situation has continued to be so since the late 1970s.
This is mainly due to the large boat population on the east coast, resulting in over-exploitation of the available resource. Consequently, fishing families on the east coast are relatively more impoverished.
What is worse, the west coast, too, seems to be heading for a similar fate as reflected by the progressive reduction in the average size of fish caught in the past few years -- a clear indication of reaching the stage of over-exploitation.
On the other hand, the deep sea area (beyond 50 metres' depth) remains woefully underexploited, thanks to the lack of a conducive policy environment.
In the inland aquaculture, although only a fraction of the potential has yet been tapped, some adverse environmental consequences have already started showing up.
The mushrooming of shrimp aquaculture farms in the vicinity of the coasts, for instance, had caused so much sea and groundwater pollution that the Supreme Court had to order their closure in 1996.
Thus, what is needed is policy intervention to reduce the boat density in the overexploited sea zones and encourage fishing activity beyond 50 metres. Inland aquaculture, on the other hand, needs to be expanded, taking the necessary anti-pollution measures.
Ideally, marine fisheries and coastal aquaculture should take care of the nutritional needs of the dependent fishermen population and spare enough for exports. The requirement of the non-coastal areas should be met largely through aquaculture.
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