Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing is on the rise.

• Despite rising Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing beyond the Exclusive Economic Zone, Indian Navy vessels monitored over 200 Chinese fishing vessels in the Indian Ocean during the first half of this year (EEZ).
• The Northern Indian Ocean Region is home to the majority of illegal activity (IOR).
• Every year on June 5th, the International Day to Combat Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing is observed.

What is Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing?

• IUU fishing is a broad term that refers to a wide range of fishing activities.
• IUU fishing occurs in all types and sizes of fisheries, both on the high seas and in areas under national jurisdiction.
• It encompasses all aspects and stages of fish capture and utilisation, and it is sometimes linked to organised crime.
• IUU fishing undermines national and regional efforts to conserve and manage fish stocks, impeding progress toward long-term sustainability and responsibility goals.

What is the current state of India's fishing industry?

Indian Situation:

• India is the world's second-largest fish producer, accounting for 7.56% of global production and contributing approximately 1.24% of the country's GVA and more than 7.28% of agricultural GVA.
• By 2024-25, India hopes to have produced 22 million metric tonnes of fish.
• The sector is recognised as a powerful engine for employing 14.5 million people and providing a living for the country's 28 million fishermen.

In recent years, the fisheries sector has undergone three major transformations:

• The expansion of inland aquaculture, particularly freshwater aquaculture.
• Capture fisheries mechanisation.
• The start-up of brackish water shrimp aquaculture has been a success.

Initiatives to boost the fishing industry in India:

Fishing Ports:

• The establishment of five major fishing ports (Kochi, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Paradip, and Petuaghat) as economic hubs.

Seaweed Park:

• A multipurpose seaweed park in Tamil Nadu would serve as a hub and spoke model for the production of high-quality seaweed-based products.

Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana:

• It aims to provide direct employment to 15 lakh fishers, farmers, and others, as well as three times that number in indirect employment opportunities.
• It also intends to double the earnings of fishermen, fish farmers, and fish workers by 2024.

Palk Bay Scheme:

• The "Diversification of Trawl Fishing Boats from the Palk Straits into Deep Sea Fishing Boats" Scheme was launched in 2017 as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme.
• It was introduced as part of the Blue Revolution Scheme.

The Marine Fisheries Act of 2021:

• The Bill proposes that licences to fish in the Exclusive Economic Zone be granted only to vessels registered under the Merchant Shipping Act of 1958. (EEZ).

What initiatives are being taken to combat illegal mining?

IPMDA stands for Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness.

• Recognizing the impact of IUU fishing on fish stocks and marine ecology in May 2022, the Quad members announced a major regional effort under the umbrella of Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA).
• It aims to provide a more accurate maritime picture of the region's "near-real-time" activities.
• It (IPMDA) is expected to catalyse India's and other Quad partners' joint efforts to combat IUU in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Indian Navy's Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) in Gurugram:

• IMAC along with the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR), monitor all vessel movements on the high seas.

• IFC-IOR has worked with other regional monitoring centres around the world to improve maritime safety and security, including efforts to monitor IUU.

UNCLOS:

• According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal nations are responsible for addressing IUU fishing issues within their respective exclusive economic zones (EEZs).
• Regional fisheries management organisations, such as the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission and the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement, are mandated by UNCLOS to monitor IUU fishing on the high seas.

The Cape Town Accord:

• The Cape Town Agreement of 2012 is an internationally binding instrument that establishes minimum standards for the design, construction, equipment, and inspection of fishing vessels of 24 metres or more in length or equivalent in gross tonnes.

The agreement is not signed by India.

Agreement on Port State Measures:

• The goal of this Agreement is to prevent, deter, and eliminate IUU fishing through the implementation of effective port State measures, ensuring long-term conservation and sustainable use of living marine resources and marine ecosystems.

The agreement is not signed by India.

International Day Against IUU Fishing:

• At its seventy-second session in November 2017, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declared June 5th as International Day Against IUU Fishing.

All about Droughts

• A prolonged period of total dryness is called a drought. The globe over, it is possible. Uneven distribution, failing monsoons, and a lack of water are the causes of this.
• When there is nearly no water or very little water available owing to different factors such as insufficient precipitation, excessive water use, a high rate of evaporation, or excessive groundwater use, the situation is referred to as a "drought."
• When rain is absent or inadequate for an extended period of time, it creates a substantial hydrologic (water) imbalance that leads to water shortages, agricultural damage, decreased streamflow, and groundwater and soil moisture depletion. Evaporation and transpiration overwhelm precipitation over a long period of time.

Types of Drought:

Meteorological Drought

• A type of drought known as a meteorological drought happens when there is a prolonged lack of precipitation.

Agricultural Drought

• Low soil moisture, which is essential for crop support, is the cause of the agricultural drought, also known as the soil moisture drought.

Water Resources Drought

• The hydrological drought is brought on by a lack of water, as the name suggests. When the water level in various reservoirs or storages, such as lakes, aquifers, and so on, drops below the threshold, the condition is referred to as a hydrological drought.

Environmental Drought

• If the natural environment's production is low owing to insufficient water availability, the ecosystem will suffer harm.

Areas prone to drought:

• According to data, more than 19% of India's total land area is in a region that is prone to drought. Additionally, drought affects about 12% of India’s total population on a regular basis. Over 50 million people are affected annually by droughts that affect more than 30% of India's entire land area.

Extreme drought-prone areas:

• The Kachchh and Marusthali regions of India's Aravali mountains are among those most badly affected by drought. In regions like Barmer and Jaisalmer, it rains around 90mm annually.
• Other Extremely drought-prone regions include the whole of Madhya Pradesh, eastern Rajasthan, interior Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and eastern Maharashtra, as well as sizeable portions of the Karnataka Plateau, northern Tamil Nadu, and southern Jharkhand.

Drought-control measures in India

• Recognize aquifers' potential for holding groundwater.
• Interlinking of river water from locations with an abundance to those with a deficit.
• Design for joining rivers together and creating dams and reservoirs
• To locate potential river basins, use satellite imagery and remote sensing. These river basins are connectable and can recognise the groundwater potential.
• Inform people about drought-tolerant plants and provide them with the tools they need to use them in the long run.
• Rainwater harvesting

The effects of the drought in India:

• Health problems caused by inadequate water supply or poor water quality
• Decline in livelihoods and earnings
• Mental health problems caused by the losses in terms of money and other things
• Deaths of both people and animals
• Due to a lack of food and water, wildlife is migrating.
• Soil erosion and desertification
• Increases forest fires.

Prevention and Reduction of Drought

• The Government of India has been carrying out the Desert Development Programme (DDP) and the Drought Prone Area Programme (DPAP) from 1973–1974 and 1977–1978, respectively.
• These initiatives work to protect vulnerable areas from desertification and drought. These places, which are regularly impacted by severe drought conditions and desertification, are in the arid, semi-arid, and dry-sub-humid zones.

Integrated Watershed Management

The prevention of drought conditions is greatly aided by integrated watershed management.

• This strategy guarantees coordinated planning, combined use of surface and groundwater, prioritisation of rational water use, and planning based on the entire amount of available water resources.
• Various watersheds have been constructed throughout the country’s different rainfed regions as part of the National Watershed Programme for Rainfed Areas.

Way Forward

A prolonged dry spell known as drought can occur anywhere on the earth as a result of the natural climate cycle. It is a slow-moving catastrophe characterised by a dearth of precipitation, which results in a water shortage. Drought has the ability to significantly impact agriculture, energy, economics, and health.

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Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC)

• The Indian Biological Data Bank was recently established by the government at the Regional Centre for Biotechnology (RCB), Faridabad.
• Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC) is the alternative name for the Indian Biological Data Centre.

Describe IBDC.

• IBDC is the first national repository for life science data in India, allowing academics from all around the country to access the data as well as submit it.
• All life science data produced by publically sponsored research in India must be archived in the IBDC.
• The Department of Biotechnology provides funding for the data centre (DBT).
• In association with the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Bhubaneshwar, it is being built at the Regional Centre for Biotechnology (RCB).
• The setup fee was about RS 85 crore.

Key Features:

• The digitised data will be stored on a four-petabyte supercomputer called ‘Brahm’.

[A petabyte equals 10,00,000 gigabytes (gb).]

• Different sections of IBDC would typically deal with the particular type(s) of life science data.
• Each IBDC section would have dedicated data submission and access schema.
• IBDC has a backup data ‘Disaster Recovery’ site at National Informatics Centre.
• Further, IBDC shall also develop highly curated data sets in order to facilitate knowledge discovery in various domains of life sciences.
• It would also provide infrastructure and expertise for biological data analysis.
• It currently accepts nucleotide sequences — the digitised genetic makeup of humans, plants, animals, and microbes.
• There are now 200 billion base pair data in the bio-bank, including 200 human genomes sequenced under the ‘1,000 Genome Project’, which is an international effort to map the genetic variations in people.
• The project will also focus on populations that are predisposed to certain diseases.
• It will also help researchers in studying zoonotic diseases.
• Although the database currently only accepts such genomic sequences, it is likely to expand later to storage of protein sequences and imaging data such as copies of Ultrasound and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

Objectives:

• Provide an IT platform for perpetually archiving biological data in the country.
• Development of standard operating Procedures (SOPs) for storing and sharing the data as per FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) Principle.
• Perform quality control, curation/annotation of data, data backup and management of data life cycle.
• Development of web-based tools/Application Programming Interface (API) for data sharing/retrieval.
• Organization of training programs on ‘Big’ data analysis and benefits of data sharing.

Data Access:

IBDC would have majorly two data access types:

• Open access/time-release access: Data submitted at IBDC would be freely accessible across the globe as per international open-access standards. The submitter, however, may choose to restrict the data access for a defined period of time.
• Restricted access: The data would not be made accessible freely. It can only be accessed through prior permission through IBDC from the original data submitter.

Significance:

• It will reduce the dependency of Indian researchers on American and European data banks.
• It will not only provide a platform to researchers to securely store their data within the country, it will also provide access to a large database of indigenous sequences for analyses.
• Such databases have traditionally played a key role in determining the genetic basis of various diseases and finding targets for vaccines and therapeutics.

Asian Diarrhoeal Disease and Nutrition Conference

Union Minister recently spoke at the 16th Asian Conference on Diarrhoeal Disease and Nutrition (ASCODD) in Kolkata. Delegates from India and other South East Asian countries, African countries, the United States, and Europe participated virtually in the conference.

What are the Conference's Key Highlights?

• The theme of the ASCODD was "Community participation in the prevention and control of cholera, typhoid, and other enteric diseases in low and middle-income countries: beyond the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic."

What is Diarrhoeal Disease?

• Diarrhoea is defined as having three or more loose or liquid stools per day (or more frequent passage than is normal for the individual).
• Dehydration is the most serious threat posed by diarrhoea.
• Water and electrolytes (sodium, chloride, potassium, and bicarbonate) are lost during a diarrhoeal episode through liquid stools, vomit, sweat, urine, and breathing.
• When these losses are not replaced, dehydration occurs.
• Diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under the age of five, according to statistics.
• Diarrhoea kills approximately 525,000 children under the age of five each year.
• Every year, nearly 1.7 billion children worldwide suffer from diarrhoea.
• Acute Watery Diarrhoea - lasts for several hours or days and includes cholera;
• Acute Bloody Diarrhea, also known as dysentery; and
• Diarrhoea that lasts 14 days or longer: Persistent Diarrhoea

Causes:

• Diarrhoea can be caused by bacterial infections like cholera and typhoid, as well as viral and parasitic organisms, the majority of which are spread by faeces-contaminated water.
• Malnutrition: Children who die from diarrhoea frequently have underlying malnutrition, making them more susceptible to diarrhoea.
• Contaminated Food and Water: Human faeces contamination, such as that from sewage, septic tanks, and latrines, is of particular concern. Microorganisms that cause diarrhoea can also be found in animal faeces.

Measures to prevent:

• Access to safe drinking water; use of improved sanitation; soapy hand washing, Breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months of life; good personal and food hygiene; infection prevention education; and rotavirus vaccination can prevent diarrhoea.

Treatment:

• Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) Rehydration: ORS is a combination of pure water, salt, and sugar. Each treatment costs only a few cents. The water and electrolytes lost in the faeces are replaced by ORS, which is absorbed in the small intestine.
• Zinc Supplements: Zinc supplements are associated with a 30% reduction in stool volume and a 25% reduction in diarrhoea episode duration.
• Intravenous fluid rehydration: This is done in cases of severe dehydration or shock.
• Nutrient-rich Foods: The vicious circle of malnutrition and diarrhoea can be broken by continuing to give nutrient-rich foods - including breast milk - during an episode and by giving children a nutritious diet - including exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life - when they are well.
• Consultation with a Medical Professional: For the treatment of persistent diarrhoea, blood in the stool, or signs of dehydration.

What are India's Related Initiatives?

• IDCF (Intensified Diarrhoea Control Fortnight): Since 2014, ICDF has been observed during the pre-monsoon/monsoon season to raise awareness about the use of ORS and zinc in diarrhoea, with the goal of achieving "zero child deaths due to childhood diarrhoea."
• IAPPD (Integrated Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhoea): In 2014, India launched the IAPPD (Integrated Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhoea) to undertake collaborative efforts to prevent diarrhoea and pneumonia-related under-five deaths.
• UIP (Universal Immunization Program): It was introduced by the government in 1985 and protects children and pregnant women from 12 vaccine-preventable diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea.
• Social Awareness and Action to Successfully Neutralize Pneumonia (SAANS) Campaign: It aims to reduce child mortality due to pneumonia, which accounts for approximately 15% of all deaths in children under the age of five each year.

Megalithic Burial Sites

• Recent research indicates that Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati district is home to the largest number of anthropomorphic burial sites.
• An anthropomorphic site is one that has an image of a human body over its megalithic graves.

• A megalith is a massive stone that has been utilised, either alone or in conjunction with other stones, to build a prehistoric construction or monument.
• Megaliths were built as memorials (non-sepulchral) or as places of remembrance.
• The former are locations that have genuine burial relics such as capstones, cairn circles, and dolmenoid cists (box-shaped stone burial chambers) (distinctive mushroom-shaped burial chambers found mainly in Kerala).
• Terracotta was typically used for the urn or sarcophagus holding the body parts. Menhirs and other memorial structures are examples of non-sepulchral megaliths.
• The majority of the megaliths in India are dated by archaeologists to the Iron Age (1500 BC to 500 BC), while some sites date back as far as 2000 BC.
• All over the Indian subcontinent are megaliths. In Peninsular India, the states of Maharashtra (mostly in Vidarbha), Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana are home to the majority of megalithic sites.

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