International Journal of Food Science and Nutrition 10 International Journal of Food Science and Nutrition ISSN: 2455-4898 Impact Factor: RJIF 5.14 www.foodsciencejournal.com Volume 3; Issue 4; July 2018; Page No. 10-23 Review of marine fishery status along the supply chain in Sri Lanka Kamal Edirisinghe 1 , Jagath Wansapala 2 , Indira Wickramasinghe 3 1 Department of Agriculture & Food Technology, University of Vocational Technology, Ratmalana, Sri Lanka 2, 3 Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenapura, Gangodawila, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka Abstract This paper provides a broad review of marine fishery including, coastal, offshore fisheries, and status of fish freshness quality along with the supply chain and fisheries management issues and opportunities. Past two decades of the marine fishery industry is compared from harvest to the consumer, reviewed parameters which related to fish freshness and shelf life throughout the marketing network and find out drawbacks or obstacles or problems of quality of the fish. Poor hygienic practices of deck handling, storing, fish landing sites, handling of fish, fish stalls, cleaning, gutting, cutting and use of other related equipment were emphasized on previous researches. Those factors were affected to freshness quality, shelf life, heavy losses and finally economic value. The relationship between fish quality and freshness correlate with six factors, but some factors not yet implemented for quality assurance in Sri Lankan fishery industry. Using modern technology, the rapid quality indicators can be used other than the sensory evaluation to determine the freshness of the fish. Keywords: fish freshness, supply chain, rapid quality indicators, and sensory evaluation 1. Introduction Sri Lanka is an island that is located between latitudes 50 30’ and 100 00’ North and longitudes 700 30’ and 820 00’ East in the Indian Ocean, bounded on the west by the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Mannar and on the East by the Bay of Bengal. Fishing has been a major economic activity in Sri Lanka from time immemorial and has been the major livelihood of the coastal communities. The fisheries sector in Sri Lanka has been considered as one of the major potential areas for expansion of the economy. The sector plays a vital role with respect to provision of direct and indirect employment opportunities for 560,000 and livelihood for 2.6 million people, generation of income (MFARD 2011, MFRAD 2012, MFRAD 2015; Ceylon Chamber of Commerce; Blindheim & Foyn (1980) [38, 39, 40, 21, 16] . foreign exchange earnings and provision of reasonably priced protein for the rural and urban masses in the country. The fisheries sector constitutes three major sub sectors viz. Coastal Fisheries, Offshore/Deep Sea Fisheries and Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture. Mostly, in Sri Lanka, the term ‘small scale fisheries’ is almost the same with coastal fisheries and ‘offshore/deep-sea fishery’ is considered as large scale fishery (NARA) 1997) [81] . The coastal belt is about 1,760Km and a land area of 65,610 Km2. As per the declaration of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), extending up to 200 miles, Which equal to 517,000Km2 of with rich in fish species, thus giving Sri Lanka a high water to land ratio. The present study reviews the trends in the marine fishery in Sri Lanka with some concern on the status of the resources and supply chain. As per the finding of environmental assessment by Dassanayake, 1994 [24] of bay of Bengal region is rich diversified fish ground was found and suggested to maintain sustainable level for fishery and further described by Charles, 2001 [20] . 2. Sources of Information Past records and information that has been published by MFRAD, NARA, IOTC, BOBP, FAO and reports of reviewed journals were analyzed for this study. The marine fisheries industry in Sri Lanka has a long history. During the early stages of development, traditional methods of fishing using canoes and gear, such as beach-seines, hand-line, and nets made out of coir and stake nets, were used in coastal areas. Fish production in the 1940s was in the region of 40 000 t (Delgado et al, 2003) [28] . A high percentage of this production came principally from beach seines. A stage of rapid development in fisheries began in the late 1950s after introducing motorized modern craft and methods (Joseph, 1983, Joseph et al,. 1985, ADB 2005, ACDI-VOCA, 2006) [60, 61, 02, 03] . With these technological developments and the open-access nature of operations, fishing effort has accelerated over the years, both by increasing fishing power and fishing units. In addition, the government provided motivations in the form of subsidies on capital goods and institutional credit (De Silva et al., 1996) [29] . As a results of introducing technological inputs coastal fish production was increased from 84 400 t in 1962 to 152 750 t in 1999. Marine fisheries in Sri Lanka can be divided into two major categories such as coastal and offshore fisheries. The coastal fisheries can be further divided into pelagic and demersal fisheries. Wijayaratne, (2001), Barut, N.C et al., (2003), Ginigaddarage, (1992) [114, 14, 45] pointed out that the coastal fisheries still account for about 67% of the marine fish caught; the peak production of the fish from the coastal fishery was