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Impacts of climate variability and resulting changes in aquatic ecosystems have caused a rapid shift in the spatial distribution of species. This shift forces diversification in livelihood options among the fishers. Many resources are emerging as new fishery which could be the indicator of changes in the food web and ecosystems as a whole due to climatic variability coupled with changes in exploitation patterns. One of the emerging non-conventional fishery resources is the pufferfish which is exploited along the Karnataka coast, south-eastern Arabian Sea. A decrease in mean trophic level due to the increased fishing effort or climatic variability resulted in the removal of top-level predators leading to the rise of mid-level carnivores like Lagocephalus inermis in the Arabian Sea. A substantial increase has been noticed in the landing of pufferfish in trawl along with Karnataka since 2007 and has resulted in diversification of the employment in the fisheries sector. The pufferfish brought to the shore by trawlers are degutted, de-skinned, and cut into small pieces, and packed for transportation to other parts of the country. This sector has provided employment to about fifty women in each landing center, and each of them earns INR 200-300/day. The matured eggs collected from the fish are sold at a price of INR 10/kg. In addition, the trade of salted and dried fishes generated employment to an additional 50 women in the sector. This diversification has given more employment opportunities, especially to women. The study conducted revealed an increase of 1.5 fold from landing to the final product. Diversification of the livelihood to cope up with the changes in the fishery is an adaptation measure to combat species shift associated with climate change and climatic variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, India has been projected as one of the major elasmobranch fishing nations in the world. However, management and conservation efforts are not commensurate with this trend. Along with the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, several generic conservation measures are in place at the regional/local level. But India is still a long way from meeting global conservation commitments. We present here the status of elasmobranch management and conservation in India, with the specific objective of identifying the gaps in the existing set-up. We also present recommendations based on a national consultative workshop held at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, in February 2020. We recommend the implementation of a National Plan of Action (NPOA-Sharks) and more inclusive governance and policymaking for elasmobranch conservation in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]