Enhancing Fishers’ Livelihood through Wetland Fisheries Management in East Chamapran District of Bihar

The outbreak of COVID-19 in India has called for emergency lockdown in the country for more than two month, and this phenomenon has caused sharp declines in demand and supply, lesser business and trade, transport and supply disruptions. It has greatly affected the life and livelihoods of farmers and fishers due to supply side disruption. During this challenging time of lockdown, the livelihood of fishers of Kothia maun of East Champran district of Bihar was enhanced through increase in production and productivity and increase in fishing days.

Kothia maun (N26°23'37.54"; E 85°10'16.54") is located 38 km of Motihari town and is typically 'Oxbow' shaped in appearance. The maun has maximum water spread area of 60 ha and the depth ranged between 2-7 m. Fishing in the water body carries out by fishers living around the water body under the control of Tetaria block fisherman cooperative society. 200 fishers’ families are earning their livelihood through fishing in this maun. After permission from the civic authorities, fishing harvest operation during the lockdown period was initiated at this wetland in May 2020. Fishing was done in the wetland as per the guidelines issued by ICAR-CIFRI for the wetlands and reservoirs for Covid management, like using face cover, maintaining social distance of 1.5 meters between two fishers and a distance of 4 meters between two boats. In 10 fishing day, 3.6 tonnes of fish were harvested by the fishers, which were sold at the wetland site only. The fish caught include Indian Major carp Rohu, Catla, Mrigal, Exotic carps Amur carp, Grass carp and small fishes like Gudusia chapra. During the lockdown period, the fisherman cooperative society has and an earning of Rs. 4 lacs through open water fisheries.

The ICAR-CIFRI initiated development project at this wetland in August 2018 to shoulder the challenge for the implementation of scientific management norms developed by it in a participatory model. The programme “Wetland Fisheries Development Projects of Bihar under Central Sector Scheme (CSS) Blue Revolution” has been successfully demonstrated the ICAR-CIFRI technological intervention in optimum exploitation of underexploited wetlands of Bihar in respect of fish yield with financial assistance from NFDB Hyderabad. The three-pronged strategy adopted by the institute was input, infrastructure and information dissemination to implement fisheries enhancement protocol developed for ox-bow lakes.

CIFRI technological interventions during the last one and half years Kothia maun have brought several-fold improvement in catch per unit effort, increase in fishing days from 30 days to 90 days and fish yield from 55 to 160 Kg/ha. Prolonged fishing days have also reduced migration of fishers for non-fishing jobs to other cities.

The print and electronic media including DD News Patna, Zee News Bihar Jharkhand, Samay Bihar Jharkhand, Prabhat Khabar gave wide coverage of this project improvement and it will help in motivating fishers of the region to adopt such scientific management norms to usher second blue revolution in the state of Bihar.

Source; CIFRI