Fishermen livelihoods and marine fishery resources: An impact study in Gulf of Mannar coast, Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Marine fishery resources provide nutritional security and livelihoods to people. Also it’s plays pivotal role in Indian economy. Even though it has issues like marine fishery resources depletion due to the overexploitation of marine fishery resource, pollution and lack of sustainable marine fishery resource management and these problems are also found in the Gulf of Mannar coast, Tamil Nadu. The objective of the present study was find impact of livelihoods of fishermen communities on the marine fishery resources depletion. This study was carried out in Gulf of Mannar coast, Tamil Nadu during April 2017 to August 2017. Collected data were analysed by correlation coefficient and simple regression. Calculated correlation coefficient value was 0.91 which indicates that the significance levels of positive relationship are established between the fish production and population. ‘R’ square value was 0.99* which indicates that 99% of fish productions are influenced by the fisher population. Results revealed high correlation between the marine fishery resources (production) and livelihoods of fishermen community (fisher population). It explains that high level of dependency of marine fishery resources affect the marine fishery resources at negative way which is also one of the reasons for resource depletion. It leads to poor economic status of fishermen households.