Harvest Losses at Various Resources of Inland Fisheries

To properly plan loss reduction strategies, information on the magnitude of losses is important. The up-to-date data on harvest and post harvest losses in inland fisheries from different sources are not available in Indian context. The need of such estimates has become all the more important. Hence, a pilot study was undertaken with the objective of assessing the harvest losses at various inland fishery resources in East Godavari, West Godavari and Khammam districts in Andhra Pradesh, and Hirakud reservoir in Orissa. The extent of losses were found to be 2.40% in freshwater aquaculture, 1.86% in brackishwater aquaculture, 6.52 to 8.89% in reservoir fisheries, 3.69 to 4.48% at landing centres of lake, 8.56 to 13.94% in riverine fisheries and 6.32% in estuarine fisheries. An effort has also been made to identify the causes for these losses, which have been discussed in detail in this paper.