Stewardship Council (MSC) certified fishery, for the short-neck clam in the Ashtamudi Lake, Kerala. Estimation of marine fish landings The institute collects Marine Fisheries Statistics for estimating species-wise landings from all along the coast which is released every year as a booklet. CMFRI has coordinated the Marine Fisheries Census of India by Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries (DADF) during the years 2005, 2010 and 2016. The latest marine fisheries census data (2016) collected by CMFRI contains information from 882263 fisher households in 4057 villages. Details of marine fisherfolk residing in the marine fishing villages of all the 9 maritime states and 2 union territories of India, information regarding the fishing craft and fishing gears from 50 fishing harbours and 1281 fish landing centers in the country and the socio-economics were collected. Software for enabling the data entry into a database was developed in-house. The innovative and time relevant way of data entry of marine fish landings data using electronic tablets at landings centres with web based computer application in the IBM server with Oracle RDBMS for online data entry support has been developed, tested and implemented enabling swift collation and dissemination of vital fish landings statistics on a national basis. The spatial mapping of fishing grounds on a continuous basis, which will help in identifying the seasons of high abundance of spawners/juveniles and in identification of critical fishing grounds where seasonal and spatial closure of trawl fishery can be implemented is facilitated under the various projects operated by the institute. Multi-species biomass dynamic models are being developed to address the multi-species and multi-gear fisheries assessments in India. Integration of satellite technologies into fisheries management To effectively utilize satellite technology for managing marine fisheries sector the institute has joined hands with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) with the aim to identify and forecast Potential Fishing Zones (PFZ). GIS based resource mapping of distribution and abundance of fin fishes and shellfishes off the Indian coast and using the GIS technology for mapping of marine fish landing centres. The CMFRI Special Publication on `Handbook on Application of GIS as a Decision Support Tool in Marine Fisheries’ in Marine Fisheries and the GIS based inventory of 1278 marine fish landing centres of Indian coast prepared by CMFRI, was sought by Indian Navy. The types of fishing activity, seasonality of fishing and the extent of fishing operations from each fishing centres are