ICAR-CIFRI organized Fish Harvest Mela at Rulhi wetland, East Champaran, Bihar
ICAR-CIFRI, Kolkta organized a fish harvest mela on the bank of Rulhi maun, a seasonally open Ox-bow lake with 80 ha water spread area at Motihari, East Champaran, Bihar on 9 February, 2020. The mela was attended by the District Fisheries Officer, East Champaran, local officials along with different stakeholders and more than 100 fishers. The weed infested wetland was lying in derelict condition with negligible management input upon which around 300 fishermen household from four surrounding villages were dependent for their livelihood.
The ICAR-CIFRI selected this wetland along with four other wetlands namely Kararia, Sirsa, Majharia and Kothia from district East Champaran to shoulder the challenge for implementation of scientific management norms developed by it in a participatory mode. The programme “Wetland Fisheries Development Projects of Bihar under Central Sector Scheme (CSS) Blue Revolution” have been successfully demonstrated the ICAR-CIFRI technological intervention in optimum exploitation of under exploited wetlands of Bihar in respect of fish yield with financial assistance from NFDB Hyderabad. The three pronged strategy adopted by the institute was input, infrastructure and information dissemination to implement fisheries enhancement protocol developed for ox-bow lakes.
CIFRI technological interventions during the last two years at Rulhi maun have brought several fold improvement in catch per unit effort, increase in fishing days from 35 days to 93 days and fish yield from 60 to 153 Kg/ha. Prolonged fishing days have also reduced migration of fishers for non-fishing jobs to other cities.
The print and electronic media including DD news Patna gave wide coverage of the fish harvest mela and it will help in motivating fishers of the region to adopt such scientific management norms to usher second blue revolution in the state of Bihar.