Dissemination and Adoption of Potential Fishery Zone Advisories in India

Potential Fishery Zone (PFZ) advisories were first launched in 1992 by ISRO to facilitate fishers save search time, fuel cost and efforts. In number of validation exercises conducted by scientists the accuracy of prediction of fishing grounds was found to be very high. Finding that PFZs have the potential to bring about paradigm shift in the ways fishing is done in the open sea and will be more beneficial to small fishers using beach landing crafts and small mechanized boats, these advisories were disseminated by INCOIS, Hyderabad through web, fax, e-mail, TV, radio, newspapers, electronic display boards and through principal investigators through the coastal area of India in mission mode. These advisories are being disseminated amongst fishers free of cost in local language in real time. Despite these efforts and measures INCOIS reports a user base of only 50,000 out of 0.89 million active marine fishers in last 19 years. The present research aims at understanding why there exists such a huge gap between the active users and potential users despite proven efficacy of these advisories in prediction of fishing grounds and which is reaching to target group without any cost or charge and seeks to find answers to such a slow diffusion of this service which has been termed as a shining example of Gandhian engineering by examining role of different means employed in spreading of awareness and adoption of these advisories. The research also seeks insights into the process of diffusion of new innovation or an idea which may help in course correction in respect of PFZ dissemination and lessons learnt here may be e used in designing and planning any intervention in future.