Inland Fisheries

5.4.2.1.3 Conservation and management

Regulated discharge through incoming rivers, siltation and anthropogenic pressure has made considerable negative impact on the fishery of Chilka Lake. On account of siltation, the lake has shrunken from 906 km² in 1965 to 620 km² in 1995. Siltation at the lagoon bed and the connecting channel has resulted in profuse weed infestation at 60 – 950 kg/m². In addition, the recently made man-made breakthrough between the lake and the ocean probably for promoting tourism caused changes to the lake's ecology. Hence, there has been a qualitative and quantitative decline in fisheries. Total fish landing has decreased from 4,243 tonnes in 1990 to 1270 tonnes in 1995. Prawn catch decreased from 28% to 14%. Overfishing and wanton destruction of stocks, barricading the outer channel with fixed small meshed gill nets, construction of pens with fine mesh nylon mosquito netting, increased number of operators atc are the factors attributed to the low fish production. The population of Irrawaddy Dolphins is also dwindling and has come down to as few as 50 in numbers due to entanglement in gill nets and drags nets. Cumulative effect of all these factors has caused a sharp decline of the once lucrative commercial fishery of the Chilka Lake. Therefore, it is neceassry to take stringent conservation measures to overcome all these problems for the improvement of the Chilka lake fishery. Chilka Lake is designated a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention.