India

India has a coastline of 7 516 km, an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 2.02 million km², and more  than 1 billion people (nearly 20%) live in the coastal areas.  Fisheries and aquaculture play an important role in its economy and livelihood. The Indian fishing fleet comprises an assemblage of fishing boats that mainly include trawlers, gillnets, small purse/ring seiners, hook and line boats, etc. and in 2018, there were 168,272 vessels. The total landings of tuna and tuna-like species in India for 2018, was about 208 928t. Gillnets contributed 40.45%, followed by small purse/ring seiners (12.42%), trawls (10.01%) and pole-and-line (6.03%). Other gears like small longline and gillnet-cum-longline also contributed to tuna landings in small quantities. In 2018, seven species of tuna contributed to the landings, four representing the neritic (27.76%), three from the oceanic group (35.65%), yellowfin tuna (17.94%), followed by skipjack tuna (17.42%) and kawakawa (15.89%).