Inland Fisheries

6.2.4 Culture and capture fishery of beels

There are systems, which combine the norms or capture and culture fisheries. The marginal areas of beels are cordoned off for culture systems either as ponds or as pens and the central portion is left for capture fisheries. This has been tried in many places of the country.

In order to increase production from beels, some culture practices can be easily incorporated without disturbing the existing practice of capture fisheries. A system of combining capture fishery and aquaculture has been developed by CIFRI, which has been practised widely in the eastern and northeastern states of India.

Under this system, a series of small enclosures are created along the periphery of the lake to be leased out to entrepreneurs for aquaculture. These enclosure can be made of earthen dykes or bamboo mat barricades. Some of the enclosure can act as nurseries to rear fish seed both for aquaculture and stocking. When culture based fishery is practised the connecting channel should be protected with wire mesh to prevent stocked fish from escaping.

Integrated system of development of floodplain wetlands and beels in which integrate the many uses of floodplain wetlands and minimize conflicts. Floodplain wetlands and areas along their margins already tend to become swamps converting these marginal areas into paddy fields is comman practice among relatively resource rich farmer. The beels area consequently shrinks. Fisheries get marginalized in the process. This is a very common cause of conflicts among the various water users. As some lake serve as bird sanctuaries, environmentalists are often cautions about competing uses. The flood plain wetlands are used for a variety of other purposes such as navigation, jute retting, collection of edible aquatic mollusc and plants. Each activity affects other water uses.

The integration plan envisages developing agriculture and aquaculture in swampy portion, while leaving the deeper portion of opposite for capture and culture based fisheries. There will be a dyke separate the two segments of the lake and water flow to the agriculture and aquaculture activities in the southern segments will be regulated through small canals. A central marshy portion of the beels / floodplain wetlands will be left for to attract migratory bird species. In most of these lakes, exotic species have established and changed the species composition.