An empirical study on problems of fish aqua farmers of west godavari district of Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh with a coastline of 974 km encompassing nine coastal districts has had a long history of fishing. Starting with traditional fishing in ancient times to the modern, technology-intensive fishing, the marine fisheries sector of the state has grown tremendously. There are two major fishing harbours at Visakhapatnam and Kakinada where bulk of total trawl catch (nearly 70%) is landed and three minor fishing harbours at Bhairavapalem, Machilipatnam and Nizamapatnam. The marine fishermen population of the state are being active in fishery related activities throughout the year. The marine fisheries sector, at present, is an important source of employment and income generation in the state, but is plagued with several problems such as inadequate power supply, non-support of fishing cooperative societies, non-support from local administration, high cost of transportation, no good infrastructure, non-availability of suitable market etc. is the need of the hour. So, the study aims to find various problems among four mandals Akividu, Bhimavaram, Kalla and Mogalturu and among three categories of aqua farmers such as small, medium and large. The primary data is collected through a well-structured questionnaire and administered to the target fish aqua farmers of four mandals and three categories of fish aqua farmers.