Abstract
The COVID-19 related lockdowns have brought the planet to a standstill. It has severely shrunk the global economy in the year 2020, including India. The blue economy and especially the small-scale fisheries sector in India have dwindled due to disruptions in the fish catch, market, and supply chain. This research presents the applicability of satellite data to monitor the impact of COVID-19 related lockdown on the Indian fisheries sector. Three harbors namely Mangrol, Veraval, and Vankbara situated on the north-western coast of India were selected in this study based on characteristics like harbor’s age, administrative control, and availability of cloud-free satellite images. To analyze the impact of COVID in the fisheries sector, we utilized high-resolution PlanetScope data for monitoring and comparison of “area under fishing boats” during the pre-lockdown, lockdown, and post-lockdown phases. A support vector machine (SVM) classification algorithm was used to identify the area under the boats. The classification results were complemented with socio-economic data and ground-level information for understanding the impact of the pandemic on the three sites. During the peak of the lockdown, it was found that the “area under fishing boats” near the docks and those parked on the land area increased by 483%, 189%, and 826% at Mangrol, Veraval, and Vanakbara harbor, respectively. After phase-I of lockdown, the number of parked vessels decreased, yet those already moved out to the land area were not returned until the south-west monsoon was over. A quarter of the annual production is estimated to be lost at the three harbors due to lockdown. Our last observation (September 2020) result shows that regular fishing activity has already been re-established in all three locations. PlanetScope data with daily revisit time has a higher potential to be used in the future and can help policymakers in making informed decisions vis-à-vis the fishing industry during an emergency situation like COVID-19.
Highlights
The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 or, popularly COVID-19 pandemic has largely limited human activities with multiple lockdowns in several parts of the world
This study aims to monitor the spatio-temporal changes in boat coverage area at the three harbors in the western state of Gujarat and the UT of Daman and Diu during the COVID-19 related lockdown
The support vector machine (SVM) classification algorithm was applied to PlanetScope data to obtain the classified maps of the area covered under the boats
Summary
The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 or, popularly COVID-19 pandemic has largely limited human activities with multiple lockdowns in several parts of the world. The cumulative loss to global GDP in 2020–2021 due to the pandemic is estimated to be around $9 trillion [1]. Even the sub-continental-sized India restricted its 1.3 billion population through the first lockdown on 24 March 2020. For India, despite various sustained efforts with lockdown featuring five different phases, the impact of COVID-19 has shown multi-sectoral spill-over effects [2,3]. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a research think tank in India, nearly 27 million youth in the age group of 20–30 years lost their jobs in April 2020. The Indian economy has already contracted by 8.9%
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