A fisherman in Fort Kochi, Kerala, India.
Photo: Alexander Mazurkevich / Adobe Stock.
India has begun conducting its fifth National Marine Fisheries Census (MFC 2025), a large-scale exercise led jointly by the Department of Fisheries (DoF) and the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI).
First formally announced on World Fisheries Day in November 2024, the census moved into full implementation this year and is now underway across coastal states. The field enumeration phase is scheduled to run for 45 days from November to December 2025, with results expected by early 2026, CMFRI said.
According to the organisers, the census will provide comprehensive and up-to-date data to support sustainable development and governance in a sector that sustains more than one million families. The survey will document every marine fishing household, fishing craft, gear, and related infrastructure along India’s coastline.
The census covers detailed demographic, socio-economic, and occupational information from marine fisher families, including education, income, housing, and access to amenities. It will also record ownership and operational details of mechanised, motorised, and non-motorised vessels, along with the types of fishing gear used.
Infrastructure such as landing centres, harbours, boatyards, ice plants, processing facilities, and cold storages will also be mapped.
The DoF said this information would help design targeted welfare schemes, improve coastal infrastructure, and form an “essential evidence base” to guide policy, welfare, and resource management decisions for India’s marine fisheries sector.
For the first time, the census is being carried out entirely digitally, replacing the earlier paper-based process. CMFRI has described the move as a “paradigm shift” that will make the process around 80% faster and more accurate.
A multilingual mobile application, VyAS-NAV, launched in April 2025, is being used to verify lists of fishing villages, harbours, and landing centres, with enumerators able to submit geotagged data with photographs in real time. Two more advanced apps, to be introduced later this year, will handle household data collection and infrastructure verification even in low-bandwidth areas.
About 3,500 enumerators and 500 supervisors, many from local fishing communities, have been trained in using the new tools and standardised survey protocols, CMFRI said.
Officials say the shift to digital tools eliminates the need for roughly two million paper forms and 80,000 booklets, reducing manual errors and data loss while enabling real-time monitoring and validation through a secure central database.