Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture has deferred the date of ban on shark fishing pending decision from the Cabinet. This was announced in a Press Release by the Ministry on 28 February. A public announcement a year ago had said that the Ministry would ban all forms of shark fishing by 01 March 2010. » More

The Indian Ocean Cetacean Symposium held in Maldives from 18-20 July 2009 concludes with a declaration pressing for improved conservation and management of whales and dolphins in the Indian Ocean.  Sixty scientists and conservationists from 22 countries particpated at the Symposium. A wide range of research, management and conservation work being carried out in the Indian Ocean was presented.  » Read more

Cost Effective Monitoring of Fishing Vessels

A pilot project on 'Cost Effective Monitoring of Fishing Vessels' is underway. Fourteen vessels will take part in the project where the vessel's route is precisely recorded with the help of GPS systems. Vessels in range of GPRS network will regularly transmit the data to ground based computer servers where it can be acccessed via Internet. The track data, complemented by the fisheries log-book information, allows researchers estimate catch and fishing effort.   » Read more

Use of anchored fish aggregating devices (FADs) as tools for scientific research is still new. MRC has started a fresh collaboration with French scientists on a project to instrument FADs for studying behaviour of fish aggregations around them. "Listening" devices fixed on FADs in conjunctin with acoustic tagging will be used to study resident times and association of the skipjack around FADs. These are considered important infomation for spatiaal configuraton of FAD networks and assessing the stock status. » Read more