Impact of COVID-19 on Indian Seafood Industry and Potential Measures for Recovery: A Mini-review

Abstract

Global seafood sector is going through a massive shock during a global-scale disturbance named “COVID-19 Pandemic”. Restricting national and international trade and traffic was the most needed step to contain the spread of virus; meanwhile it has wreaked havoc on all import-export businesses. Seafood sector, is one of the major pillar behind agricultural export (fisheries sector contributing 1.07% to the Indian agricultural GDP) and blue revolution. But due to uncertainty of the lockdown periods, the Indian seafood sector has crashed, affecting livelihoods of all fishing and related communities, export and supply chain (both domestic and international), demand and consumption etc. The sudden crisis has exposed various shortcomings of the sector and expanded our vision to look ahead of temporary solutions and find long-term sustainability. Unavailability of real-time data from planned surveys are one of the major reasons behind this failure. This article aims to highlight the present scenario of the Indian seafood sector during the pandemic through assessing various news articles, national reports and publications. Further it suggests some recovery steps like building up alternative seafood networks, promoting domestic demand and markets, forming fishing community friendly schemes (medical and insurance), adopting new technologies to prevent and handle any future crisis.