India’s Fisheries Crisis: Why Inshore Ecosystems Matter More Than Fish Stock Numbers

India’s Fisheries Crisis Latest News

• In February 2026, the Government of India released its latest report on the country’s ocean fisheries. The government claimed that most of India’s marine fish stocks are sustainable. 
• This sounded like good news. But experts argue that this claim hides a bigger, more serious problem — the continuing destruction of India’s inshore fishing grounds, the waters closest to the coast.

What Does the Government Claim

• The government’s report relied on data from the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI). 
• It said that most commercial fish stocks in India “are in good health.” More specifically, it claimed that 91.1% of the 135 fish stocks studied in 2022 were found to be sustainable.

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Questioning the Official Picture

• The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tells a very different story. In its country profile on India, the FAO says India’s marine fisheries have hit a plateau. 
• Most major fish stocks are already fully exploited. It also points to unregulated access to fisheries, which has led to overcrowding of trawlers competing for shrinking fish resources.
• There’s also a technical problem with how India measures “sustainability.” CMFRI mainly uses landing data — this means it looks at how much fish fishermen actually catch, and estimates fish stocks in the sea based on that. 
  • This is like counting shells found on a beach and assuming that tells you how many shells exist in the entire sea.
• Other countries use a more reliable method called stock assessment. This involves directly measuring how much fish and marine life actually exists in the sea, rather than just counting catches. 
• India hasn’t yet adopted this costlier method. As per analysts, this gap may be creating a hidden bias, possibly linked to India’s rush to compete with China’s fishing industry.

The Real Problem: Inshore Waters Are Dying

• Catches have been falling steadily, and many fish species once common are now gone.
• But the bigger issue isn’t overfishing itself — it’s the destruction of the inshore benthic environment (the seabed and its ecosystem near the coast). Many fisheries scientists now describe this zone as “destroyed.”
• India has a narrow continental shelf around most of its coastline (except in Gujarat and parts of Maharashtra, where it’s wider). 
• This shelf area overlaps with what’s called the territorial sea — the waters within 12 nautical miles (22 km) of the shore. 
• This zone is naturally the most fertile, ideal for species like shrimp to breed and grow. But this ecosystem is now badly damaged.

What’s Causing the Damage?

• Several factors are responsible:
  • Dams on major rivers block nutrients from reaching the sea.
  • Mangrove destruction removes natural breeding grounds for fish.
  • Pollution from industries, agriculture, and growing cities is entering coastal waters.
• All these factors hit inshore waters far harder than the deep sea.

The Trawling Problem

• One major driver of this damage is mechanised trawling — a fishing method that was actually introduced to India from abroad, only around 1960. It has since grown massively.
• According to the government’s own report, India now has 64,414 mechanised fishing vessels. This number keeps growing because there are almost no restrictions on new boats entering the fishery. 
• Existing boats are also being upgraded with more powerful Chinese engines, letting them catch even more fish.
• These trawlers continuously scrape the inshore seabed. This destroys plant and animal life living there. 
• It has also created serious conflict with small-scale, traditional fishers, whose livelihoods are threatened by this competition.

Why Aren’t Rules Enough?

• There is a rule that mechanised trawlers cannot fish within 5 nautical miles of the coast. 
• But this rule is poorly enforced, for two reasons:
  • Coastal states don’t have enough staff or patrol boats to monitor inshore waters properly.
  • Governments have kept fishers themselves out of the management process, even though they could help enforce rules.
• As a result, the inshore ecosystem keeps degrading. This pushes both small-scale and mechanised fishers further out into offshore and deep-sea waters.

Is Deep-Sea Fishing the Solution?

• The government is encouraging fishers to shift toward deep-sea fishing, seeing it as a solution. But the FAO is doubtful. 
• It says that deep-sea fishing can offer, at best, only a marginal increase in output — not a real solution to the crisis.
• This approach also adds a burden on fishers. They now need more fuel and better technology just to travel farther out to sea. 
• Meanwhile, the real problem — a poorly managed inshore zone — remains unaddressed.

The Palk Bay Example

• Experts point to Palk Bay, the waters between India and Sri Lanka. 
• India’s mechanised fishing fleet regularly fishes in Sri Lankan waters, harming small-scale Sri Lankan fishers on the other side. 
• This happens regardless of who controls the island of Katchatheevu — showing how mechanised fishing’s political and economic weight overrides proper management even across international boundaries.

The Way Forward

• The core message here is this: better numbers for fish stocks don’t mean fisheries are actually sustainable. What India truly needs is stronger governance of its coastal waters. 
• This means:
  • Addressing marine pollution seriously
  • Better management and control of mechanised trawling
  • Involving small-scale fishers in decision-making
• The FAO has echoed this, stating that India needs stronger efforts at both the federal and state level to properly manage its marine fisheries. 
• Analysts also suggest that CMFRI should study the actual health of the seabed ecosystem itself, not just catch data — this would give India a much better foundation for future policy.

Source: TH | TH