Project to boost fisheries sector

Kochi: The newly organised tuna fishing industry is poised to provide a new lease of life to the capture fisheries sector in the country which has been ravaged by spiralling cost of fuel and indiscriminate increase in the fishing fleet.

The advent of new technology and rapid expansion of fishing fleet had resulted in a major depletion of fishery resources, especially of commercially-important fish species.

New breakthroughs in capture and post harvest technologies in tuna are expected to bring back the golden years, a seminar on Harvest and post harvest technologies for tuna has said. Inaugurating the seminar, Dr K. Devadasan, Director of Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (CIFT), said the Indian Council of Agricultural Research had undertaken a major project on tuna with funding of Rs 6.93 crore from the World Bank.

The project is to be undertaken with the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Marine Products Export Development Authority, CIFT, Fisheries Survey of India and the Lakshadweep Directorate of Fisheries as partners.

Exploitation of tuna resources was identified by the seminar as one of the thrust areas for increasing the export of Indian marine products.

The country has a resource potential of 2.43 lakh tonnes of oceanic tuna of which the present exploitation is only 60,000 tonnes.

The sashmi grade tuna is expected to fetch $15/kg in the international markets which is 10 times higher than its domestic price.

Indian contribution to total oceanic tuna and associated species from the Indian Ocean was only two per cent during 2006.