Journal of the Marine Biological Association of India

Fisher perceptions on impacts of jellyfish swarming on fishing operations along the Gujarat coast, India

Volume 63 Issue 1

Tarachand Kumawat, R. Saravanan, K. Vinod, K. K. Joshi, A. K. Jaiswar, G. Deshmukhe and L. Shenoy

doi:10.6024/jmbai.2021.63.1.2272-01

Abstract

The study provides local perceptions on the regional challenge caused by jellyfish hindrances in fishing operations and the potential causes of abnormal jellyfish swarming along the Gujarat coast, India. A semistructured questionnaire framework was used along with an enumeration-based schedule to collect the data during 2017-2020. The data were collected through surveys and interviews from different fishing units along the Gujarat coast. The results have shown that distant fishing and need of extra hauls to be the highest impacted factors followed by increased fish sorting time, reduced fish catches, clogging of fishing gears, prevention of fishing in some cases, and mild painful stings. There was no significant difference in views on jellyfish hindrances (p> 0.05; Kruskal-Wallis test) among the respondents operating the trawlers, gillnetters and bag-netters. However, it has a high degree of impact and hence necessitated the need for prioritizing the potential causes of abnormal swarming namely overfishing followed by climate change, eutrophication, translocation, and habitat modifications. By this study, we propose to use the precautionary principles (based on prioritized ranking for management actions) to manage the harmful jellyfishes and simultaneously harvest the useful jellyfishes as the general approach in dealing with jellyfishes in the northern Arabian Sea along the Gujarat coast, India

Keywords

Arabian Sea, jellyfish hindrances, ethnobiology, fishery impact

Date : 25-02-2021