Abstract :
The “Sundarbans”, situated at the largest delta-face of Bhagirathi-Hoogly river systems in India is declared as World Heritage Site (1984) for the largest mangrove forest and the only mangrove tiger land in the world. It exhibits an excellent reserve of aquatic as well as forest resources, co-existing as the most complex mangrove food web. With increasing local population, aquatic resources of southern Sundarbans are being highly exploited by “Commercial Coastal Fishing Aquaculture”, practiced continuously by local fishermen, big businessmen and Multi National Companies (MNCs) through years causing over-exploitation of commercially valuable aquatic species like commercial prawn, carps, prawn seedlings, etc. This anthropogenic interference into mangrove ecosystem of Sundarbans is achieving high economic profit at the cost of high ecological loss. This paper has revealed and assessed severe environmental impact of coastal fishing i.e. 1) loss of biodiversity 2) negative reflection of infra-structural development 3) increasing effect of trawling 4) effect of use of gill net 5) impact of coastal aqua-culture 6) pollution in coastal waters 7) loss of mangrove species 8) overall estuarine water pollution etc. It has also suggested a proper Environmental Management Plan in order to mitigate this man-made disaster to ensure conservative use of local aquatic resources leading towards sustainable development of the environment of Sundarbans.
