06-bioresourcesstatu.. - M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation

Chilika Lake
agriculture and/or fishery mostly constitute the
male folk. Out of the SC, keutas constitute about
68% and are considered as a superior class.
Kondara constitute the second largest fishermen
community (CIDA, 1992). Apart from these
traditional fishermen communities, there are
refugees from Bangaladesh who are well settled in
. Tangi area and practice fishing as their primary
occupation. Further, with advent of prawn culture,
many non-traditional fishermen belonging to upper
castes have also entered the fray and compete
with the traditional fishermen for fishing. The
gender ratio of the total population as well as that
of SC is approximately 1:1. Cultivators include
landowners that account a population of 22, 840.
Agriculture labourers account 9, 969 (males 8,373
and females 1,596). Workers living on livestock,
mostly represented by the fishermen community,
account 16,057 (male 15,704 and female 353). The
fisherman population has been estimated to be 1,
04, 040 (male 30, 630, female 26, 540 and children
46, 866) belonging to 128 fishermen villages
(Directorate of Fisheries, 1997).
Irrespective of the caste, horizontally, the
fishermen communities may be divided on
economic lines. Families having ownership of nets,
boats, equipment accessories for fishing are at a
higher level; whereas fishermen with out these
assets comprise the lower level. According to an
estimation there are in total 454 motorised boats,
4, 971 traditional boats and 19, 190 nets in the
locality (Directorate of Fisheries, 1997).
IV.Biodiversity and Conservation values
i. Flora
The earliest information on the flora of Chilika is
available from Annandale (1920). In the same year
Narayanswami and Carter (1920) listed about 150
species of vascular plants that included a few
pteridophytes. The said list has been revised and
the nomenclature updated (Panigrahi, 1988).
Aquatic terrestrial vegetation of Chilika and the
adjoining regions have been in the mean time
enlisted to be 546 species, belonging to 379 genera
and 107 families (Patnaik 1973a; Panda and
Patnaik 1985, 2002) and the list is likely to go up.
In its wave site, CDAdisplays a tentative plant list
containing 706 species belonging to 488 genera
under 80 dicot and 25 monocot families (CDA,
2001).
Depending on the local habitat condition, the
vegetation of Chilika has been categorised under
three groups, namely :
208
1. Aquatic vegetation: consisting hydrophytes
(Table 3) dominated by Potamogeton
pectinatus and allied species
2. Littoral scrub jungle: comprising of Salvadora
persica, Pongamia pinnata, Colubrina
asiatica, Cassipourea ceylanica, Aegiceras
corniculatum, Azima tetracantha, Pisonia
aculeata, Clerodendron inerme, Carmona
retusa, Carissa spinarumm, Crateva
spinarumm, Meytinus emarginatus, Opuntia
dillenii, Ficus sp., Crateva adansonii,
Lepisanthes tetraphylla, StrebIus asper etc, a
few climbers such as Cissus quadrangutasris,
Pentatropis capensis, Tyrophora indica etc.
and trees represented by Ficus sp., Crataeva
adansonii, Lepisanthes tetraphylla etc., and
3. Sand dune and psammophytic vegetation:
comprising of Hydrophylax maritima,
Ipomoea pescaprae, Macrotyloma ciliatum
etc. (Panda and Patnaik, 1988). Species like
SaIi cornia brachiata, Suaeda maritima,
Sesuvium portulacastrum, Phyla nodirlora,
Heliotropium curassavicum and some others
occur in marshes and salt fields along the edges
and other shallow areas of the lake.
The vascular hydrophytes that include a few
pteridophytes are predominately found at the
northern sector (Table 3). These include
submerged, emergent and floating types (Mohanty
et ai, 2001).
The Chilika lagoon has also been surveyed for
algal flora including phytoplaktons by number of
workers (Biswas, 1924, 1934; Parija and Parija,
1946; Roy, 1954, Patnaik, 1973a; Patnaik and
Sarkar, 1976;Adhikary and Sahu, 1991,1992;Sahu
and Adhikary, 1999, Raman and Satyanarayana,
2002). Occurrences and distribution of the algal
flora is presented in Table 4. It needs to be
underlined that the agarophytes Gracillaria
lichenoides and G. verrucosa (=G.
conrervoides), which were earlier reported to be
very abundant is now represented by a single
species, G. verrucosa confined to the central
seetor presently (Sahu and Adhikary, (999).
Biomass (wet weight) of different vegetation types
and its distribution is assessed from remotely
sensed data combined with in situ observations.
Maximum wet-weight biomass of submerged
macrophytes estimated for northern, eentral, and
southern seetors are 6460, 6200, 5020 glm'
respectively. Potamogeton pectinatus followed by