Assessment of marine fish stocks within India’s ExclusiveEconomic Zone: Status report 2022

India is one of the major fishing nations in the Indian Ocean, with commercial marine fishlandings in the country comprising of nearly 1000 species. A comprehensive and periodicassessment of the stocks is crucial for achieving the goals of sustainable fisheries harvestand management. The ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Ministry ofAgriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Govt. of India, is mandated to monitor and assess themarine fisheries resources in the Indian EEZ. In the present study, 135 stocks across 70species were assessed using monthly length-frequency data. The health status of the stockis projected based on a combination of indicators such as relative biomass or spawningstock biomass (B/Bmsy or SSB/SSB0) and relative fishing pressure (F/Fmsy) estimated usinga standard length-based dynamic pool model (i.e., Thompson and Bell Model). Based onthe comparison of estimated values of indicators against the thresholds, the stocks wereclassified as sustainable, overfishing, overfished and rebuilding. The study revealed that91.1% of the assessed fish stocks have a healthy biomass level (sustainable stocks andthose subjected to overfishing), 8.2% of stocks are overfished, whereas 0.7% are in theprocess of rebuilding. Biology-based, Healthy stocks, Length-frequency,Stock assessment, Sustainable, Tropical