SRINAGAR: State of J&K produces 20,000 tons of fish annually with huge gap between demand and supply while only 50 percent population of the State consumes fish and 93,000 people dependent on the fisheries sector.
This was stated by Prof Nazeer Ahmed, Vice-Chancellor, SKUAST-K, during a two day conference titled ‘Fisheries and Climate: Strategies, Challenges and Sustainable Management’ is being organized by Division of Fishery Engineering, Faculty of Fisheries SKUAST-K in collaboration with Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India.
While the conference termed Trout as the pride of Jammu and Kashmir, the issue of protecting the fish variety and their ecosystem was also raised in the conferecne.
Addressing the conference,Vice-Chancellor, SKUAST-K said the fishing industry is an important not only in nutrition but also in providing employment in southern states of India, adding it contributes one per cent of National GDP and five per cent in Agriculture GDP and employing around 14 million people in India.
He said J&K State has around 93,000 people dependent on the fisheries sector, while the requirement of fish is 1.5 lakh tons, however, the state produces only 20,000 tons of fish.
“J&K has tremendous potential in the fisheries sector and it can become modern world-class industry as we have 50,000 hectares of water area in the state,” he added.
