Why in 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’s in Today’s Article?

• What Does the Government Claim?
• Questioning the Official Picture
• The Real Problem: Inshore Waters Are Dying
• The Trawling Problem
• Why Aren't Rules Enough?
• Is Deep-Sea Fishing the Solution?
• The Way Forward

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.

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.