Kochi: : In a major development that would become crucial in monitoring the activities at various fishing centres in the State, the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) has launched an online GIS based database depicting the vicinity of fish landing centres to the Covid-19 hotspots of Kerala. The database offers visualisation of the entire 156 fish landing centres in Kerala in various colour groups in accordance with their geographical proximity with the Covid-19 hotspots identified by the government. The landing centres have been categorised in different groups according to their distance with the hotspots.

The first category, which requires priority in taking precautionary measures, includes fish landing centres located within 3 km of the hotspot. The landing centres at a distance of 3 to 5 km with the hotspots fall in second category, whereas the third category includes landing centres at a distance of 5 to 10 km from the hotspots. The data which is available at the Department of Health, Government of Kerala has been used by a team of CMFRI scientists to develop the online infographics. The team comprises of Dr J Jayasankar, Dr Shelton Padua, Dr C Ramachandran and Dr MA Pradeep.

As per the current status of Covid hotspots in Kerala, 17 fish landing centres fall in the first category. These landing centres are located in Thiruvananthapuram (2), Ernakulum (3), Kozhikode (2), Kannur (4) and Kasaragod (6) districts.

The GIS database, which is available in CMFRI website (www.cmfri.org.in) and will be updated in tune with the changes in the Covid hotspots, would become helpful to anybody to identify the category of a particular fish landing centre by a click, said Dr A Gopalakrishnan, Director of CMFRI.

“The initiative will greatly help authorities and policy makers to monitor the daily activities and take steps for regulatory or safety measures in marine fisheries sector in the backdrop of the Covid-19. The database will become a useful tool to implement safety measures for each landing centres according to their category.

The works are in progress to incorporate details of the fish landing centres in other maritime states too with the GIS database”, he added.