Marine fisheries census to go digital

Mumbai: In a major preparatory step for India’s 5th Marine Fisheries Census (MFC 2025), a mobile application VyAS-NAV has been launched for the digital-based data collection with an aim to boost transparency and efficiency.

Marking a shift from traditional methods to a geo-referenced, app-based digital system, the MFC 2025 will cover 1.2 million fisher households nationwide bringing in real-time validation.

This mammoth exercise is coordinated by the Department of Fisheries (DoF) of the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY).

VyAS-NAV was developed by the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) which is the nodal agency for implementing the marine fisheries census in nine coastal states.

VyAS-NAV app will be used by supervisors for field verification of fishing villages, fish landing centres and fishing harbours. This is a foundational step towards ensuring comprehensive coverage and accuracy of the census frame. This app has features to record summary pictures of villages based on primary and secondary sources.

The supervisors are staff of CMFRI, Fishery Survey of India (FSI) and the Fisheries Departments across the coastal states.

The mobile application was launched on Monday at the “Coastal States Fisheries Meet: 2025” organized in Mumbai under the chairmanship of Union Minister, Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying (MoFAH&D) and Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh.

The event also saw the presence of Prof S P Singh Baghel, Minister of State, MoFAH&D and Ministry of Panchayati Raj and George Kurian, Minister of State, MoFAH&D and Ministry of Minority Affairs along with Governors and Fisheries Ministers of several coastal states and UTs.

The MFC 2025 focuses on the exhaustive, precise, and timely documentation of every marine fisher family, fishing village, fishing craft and gear, as well as infrastructure facilities associated with fishing harbours and fish landing centres across the country, officials said.

Unlike in the past, customized mobile and tablet-based applications created by CMFRI will be used for data collection in a bid to reduce manual errors and accelerate data compilation for policy-level use. This MFC is a process that starts with the signaling of field operations and ends with the reporting. The reference period where the household enumeration takes place is the core activity. In this case it is November - December 2025.

Various constituents of this process are referred to as census operations. As of now, many such activities are planned in the pre core census phase. The first of it is, validation of Marine Fisheries villages is inaugurated today. This will be followed by a round of workshops followed by two rounds of training. These all form part of the Marine Fisheries Census.

Roughly 3500 villages and 1.2 million households will be covered in this exercise at various points in time. The village enumeration will be finalized by May- June, while family level data and other facilities will be covered during Nov-Dec, which will be done by enumerators from the village and probably fishing community. In nutshell the operations span from April to December.

The village list finalisation and landing centres data will be covered by staff of CMFRI, FSI and DoF and the same has started from Monday.

The core activity, scheduled for November–December 2025, involves trained enumerators preferably from the local community, visiting each marine fisher household with smart devices. This is preceded by a robust preparatory phase. Emphasis will be given to record finer details of fishers like their demographic and socio-economic status, alternative livelihood options, and how and where government schemes can influence their status, all collected through a robust online digital platform. Officials will train enumerators in digital data collection and will validate village and infrastructure details using VyAS-NAV.