Post Independence Development of Fisheries in Sri Lanka

• Main Author: Jinadasa, J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lana 2019
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctic
• Online Access: https://journals.sjp.ac.lk/index.php/vjhss/article/view/4026; https://doi.org/10.31357/fhss/vjhss.v00i00.4026

The Island Sri Lanka has a coast line of about 1640 km. she is ideally located in the Indian Ocean to harvest thefish stocks all the Imy to Antarctic and be one ofthe leadingfishing nations of the world. However. the reality is quite opposite to the above assumption. Her fish production was about 10.000 mt until middle of 20th century, around 1948: harvested, primarily using very primitivefishing gear made out of coir; cotton and hemp, Out of the above total catch. about 47 percent was by beach seine (madel). one of the sluggish and inefficient method offishing in the word Fish has to approach the gear instead of gear chasing after the fish. Further. the fisherman ventured into the sea to operate their primitive fishing gear in dug out canoes, wooden plank rafts or vaded out into sea up to chest height. These were traditional fishing crafts and operated in the continental shelf waters up to a distance of about 10-12 kmfrom shore. The change in the gearfrom coir nets and ropes to nylon nets and lines commenced around I958, amidst resistance from other fisherman due to their inability to absorb new technology. Infact fishermen even destroyed nylon nets by dynamiting them, at the same time, traditional log rafts and dug out canoes were fitted with out board motors to increase the efficiency ofcrafts. There were 104 such mechanized crafts in 1958 and 861 in 1963. This led to increase fish catch from 25.2 mt in 1952 to 91.2 mt in 1963 an increase of 10,000 mt/year. Subsequently, in mid 1960s more 3 1/toners, 40 of 11 toners were added on to the fleet; the latter were owned and operated by Ceylon Fisheries Corporation. Further 07 trawlers to operate in Wadge Bankfrom Colombo and tuna clippers to operate in the Oceanic waters were introduced Research and technology got underwayfunded by Colombo Planfrom mid 1950s; that was a turning point in most development of our fishing industry. Titus, the Colombo Plan was the sheet anchor of post independent fisheries research in Sri Lanka The work of Medcoff and Sivalingam ...