Ornamental fisheries are an emerging business and offer vast opportunities. In India, the Maharashtra state had a scheme called “Rainbow Revolution”, which was started to encourage breeding and export of ornamental fishes. Taking advantage of this scheme, 305 male and female entrepreneurs took up this small-scale business. Gender analysis, which provides the necessary data and information to integrate a gender perspective into policies, programs, and projects and allows for the development of interventions that address gender inequalities, was conducted using the Harvard Analysis Framework for male and female entrepreneurs involved in ornamental fish production. The objectives were to explore factors that influenced entrepreneurs to take up this business and to map the activity, access, and control profile of male and female entrepreneurs involved in ornamental fish production. Out of 305 ornamental production units under the Rainbow Revolution scheme, 110 units were studied, of which 82 were owned by men and 28 were owned by women. Factors that influenced both men and women to pursue this business were community norms, prevailing social hierarchy, demographic factors, and access to special training. Activity profile revealed that men were involved in the construction of ornamental fish production unit, observation and checking fish health, checking water parameters, live food culture, marketing, upkeep, and maintenance, and it was found that they spent an average of 8 h/day on these activities. Women were involved in fish feeding, cleaning of tanks, siphoning, feed preparation, and marketing, spending an average of 4 h/day. Many activities like feeding, cleaning of tanks and siphoning, feed preparation, setting of fish for breeding, removal of offspring, and marketing were performed by both. Men had higher access and control on resources like land, farm, machine, equipment, and finances. The Mann–Whitney U test revealed a statistically significant difference between men and women’s access and control on resources. A study has revealed that in addition to family and house responsibilities, women spent 4 h/day on this business. They have less access and control on resources because of the existing power relations with which we conclude that men and women cannot be treated as homogeneous categories when designing any schemes/policy interventions.

The knowledge, awareness, and practices (KAP) about COVID-19 among the marine fishers who are engaged in the high-risk occupations and depend on the vulnerable sources of income in the Maharashtra state of India, were investigated to understand the behavioral changes and vulnerability among the respondents because of COVID-19. Data were collected through an online survey from 1st July to 30th July 2020 during the first peak of COVID-19 in the study area by using the questionnaire. Authors based on the latest recommendations by the World Health Organization (WHO) developed the questionnaire and covered the KAP aspects under study. The questionnaire was administered through Google form link and the link was disseminated through social media such as Facebook and What’s App. The completed responses (n = 533) received from the eligible sample, excluding those outsides of the fisher community and duplicate entries were considered for analysis. Appropriate statistical tools were used to analyze the data. Among the respondents, 447 men (83.86%) and 86 women (16.14%), with a mean age of 45.4 years (M = 45.4, SD = 1.18). The results revealed that 70.92% of respondents perceived a low risk of infection because of COVID-19 with M = 1.77 and SD = 0.583, but authors found the perceived severity score high (M = 3.95, SD = 1.21) among the 60.97% of respondents. Around 95% of respondents were aware of the COVID-19, while almost all respondents knew the medium of infection and symptoms of COVID-19. The behavior of respondents towards COVID-19 infection was positive and was following sufficient precautionary measures suggested by WHO to protect themselves from COVID-19 infection. The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that the demographic features of respondents like age, education were significantly contributing to the KAP of the fisher community. The results confirmed the importance of KAP which is reflected in the behavioral responses of the fishers while tackling the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The results regarding the risk perception, severity, KAP about COVID-19 provide a collective understanding of the emerging infectious disease among the marine fishers of Maharashtra state of India.

Aims: The present study was carried out to investigate the impact of vulnerability on livelihood of fishers of Ratnagiri, Maharashtra state of India. Study Design: For this study interview schedule was used to collect the fisher information. Place and Duration of Study: In present study, the data were collected from the fishers of the three fishing villages of Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra during the year 2019-2020. Methodology: The data were randomly collected from 64 fisher by using questionnaire in the Google form and interview schedule. The vulnerability variables considered in this study are categorised as natural shocks like cyclones, heavy rain, environmental changes; personal factors like illness, sea accidents, sudden death, social conflicts and seasonality includes decline in fish catches, unpredictable price fall and non-availability of markets. The opinions of respondents with respect to vulnerability factors were recorded on the basis of three categories i.e. high impact, medium impact and low impact. The descriptive statistics i.e. percentage and frequency analysis was used to represent the results. Results: The overall results of vulnerability indicated that the natural shocks factors like cyclones, heavy rain, environmental changes and personal factors like illness, sea accidents, sudden death, social conflicts have high impact on more than 90% respondents; while seasonality factors like decline in fish catches, unpredictable price fall and non-availability of markets have high impact on livelihood of about 70% fishers respondents. Conclusion: The respondents reported that the various factors of vulnerability have direct impact on livelihood of fishers and ultimately socioeconomic conditions of the fishers.

The present study was conducted to assess the livelihood status of ornamental fish producers in the Mumbai and Thane districts of Maharashtra. A total of 30 ornamental fish producers were taken as the sample out of 90 for present study of which 22 are men and 08 are women. The semi-structured interview schedule was prepared as per the livelihood profile of the Department for International Development (DFID) framework. The socioeconomic status indicates that the majorities of the producers were literate, middle-age group and had more than 05 years of experience. The sustainable livelihood framework indicates five type of capital i.e. natural, physical, financial, human and social capital with 05 indicators each. Primary data were collected through surveys using semi structured interview schedules and stakeholder meetings. Altogether 30 ornamental fish producers out of 90 as per MPEDA (2012) from Mumbai and Thane districts were interviewed once during the study. The study revealed that the normalized mean score of natural, physical, human, financial and social capital was 0.31, 0.70, 0.56, 0.39 and 0.49 respectively. Further, the pentagon diagram of the DFID model indicated the higher score of physical and financial capital in the districts signifies that

The present investigation was taken to know the variations with respect to design, net specification, mesh size of Disco dol trawl net operated along the Ratnagiri coast. A total of 42 trawl net was sampled physically by using measurement tape and scale. The data were collected by structured schedule consisting of two major sections. The first section was for vessel details and second for the specifications of trawl nets. The study revealed that, two seam locally known ‘Disco dol’, operated from Ratnagiri was observed with eight belly sections of overall length ranges from 41 to 52m. Wings of the net were triangular in shape with a mesh size variation between 120-440 mm. The dimensions such as breadth, number of meshes along breadth and mesh size were decreasing from first to last belly section, but average number of meshes per metre were increasing from first to last belly. Wide reduction of 400-40 mm was observed in mesh sizes of belly section for Disco dol from first to last belly. Cod end mesh size of trawl operated from Jaigad, Kasarveli, Mirkarwada and Purnagad landing centres was recorded as 20 mm. In Ratnagiri, two seam trawl net was used mainly to catch fishes.