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Fisheries Miseries

Pakistan is the only coastal country in the world with almost zero per cent of shrimp farming.

By Faizan Usmani | October 2023


Pakistan is among the ten most vulnerable countries to climate change. The revival of the country’s struggling fishing industry necessitates a long-term programme based on planning, well-thought-out strategies, and proper homework.

As a rule, the plight of a nation is exhibited in its economic backwardness and poor socio-economic indicators. However, such deprivations become more than a disaster for a country that has been blessed with all such water resources and fertile land aplenty that can turn its never-ending miseries into a lasting felicity and help it emerge as an economically stable and prosperous country.

Despite being rich in natural and human resources, Pakistan is one of those poor countries that fall into the category of low economic growth rates, and what makes it more than a misfortune is its underutilised 1,120 kilometres of coastal belt, which is brimmed with pristine, beautiful beaches and replete with marine and inland fishery resources. Besides the elongated coastline covering Makran and Karachi coasts, Pakistan has a fishing area of nearly 300,270 square kilometres, rich in marine life and biodiversity, with untapped freshwater and marine fisheries resources and their habitat.

Situated along the coastal belts, many countries have emerged as major seafood exporters, catering to their population’s nutritional needs as well. However, in Pakistan, the situation is quite the opposite. In terms of foreign exchange earnings, the contribution of the fishing industry to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is only 0.3 per cent. With total exports of USD 196 million per annum, Pakistan’s fishing sector is able to contribute approximately 1.3 per cent to agricultural GDP and below 1 per cent to national employment.

The total fish production in Pakistan is nearly 445 thousand metric tonnes per annum, which can be increased up to 650 metric tonnes per annum in relation to existing water resources that remain largely unexploited owing to a lack of technical expertise, a real absence of technological advancements in fish and shrimp seed production and due to an insufficient infrastructure with minimum facilities available to local fishermen, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Fisheries and Aquaculture Department of the United Nations.

Among the other leading factors that inhibit further growth of the fishery sector are a lack of scientific research carried out to enhance inland fish production, the use of obsolete fishing techniques and equipment as well as the lack of education in local fishermen, restricting their ability to adapt to sustainable and modern fishing methods. Currently, only four fishing harbours are fully operational across the country, while most fishing centres do not have any landing facilities. As a result, the poor handling of fish stock leads to substantial post-harvest losses and on an average, over 70 per cent of seafood gets wasted before reaching the end consumers.


Pakistan is the only coastal country in the world with almost zero per cent of shrimp farming. Particularly from the late 90s, there has been a massive decline in overall inland fish production, with the minimum landing of lobsters, crabs, shrimps, and other types of fish and shellfish. As per the statistics shared by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock, Government of Pakistan, each medium-sized fishing vessel brings approximately 70 million tonnes of trash fish on average. In addition to that, less than 10 per cent of farmed seafood is exported, while nearly 80 per cent of seafood and seafood products become rotten before landing at the port and are thus recycled into fish meal to be used merely as poultry feed. In Pakistan, the existing seafood units produce substantially less than their production capacity, while in the Balochistan province, as many as 35 seafood processing units are not even operating.

Despite its rhetoric and bravado, academia stands guilty of neglecting the philosophy of action-based learning. Most universities and professional education institutions do not proactively come forward to foster their linkages with the industry in general and the fishing sector in particular. The lack of knowledge exchange and information sharing ultimately hurts the growth of the fishing industry, which still relies on a primitive modus operandi, where most workers are illiterate and cannot keep pace with modern SOPs and procedures.

Confined to the corridors of intellectual pomposity, the Ph.D. faculty in universities do not like stepping out of the campus to help those fishermen who face the tide and search for their livelihood in the deep ocean nolens volens. Their children and women are seen toiling in the fish processing units day in and day out, peeling shrimp and removing fish entrails by hand in a stinky environment, and that too against a negligible amount paid by their employers. Being the main employment source, fisheries development tends to be a matter of survival for the communities living along the coastlines.

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