Molluscan resources and management strategies

Since the dawn of human civilization molluscs have a tremendous impact on Indian tradition and economy. In India, molluscs have been in great demand as ornaments, currency, as popular panacea for illnesses and as mascot for ward off evil spirits in olden days. Now, molluscs have assumed greater significance in our industrial, technological and aesthetic aspects of life, in addition to edible utility. Several species of gastropods and bivalves are traditionally fished for food and shell from time immemorial. The exploitation of cephalopods began recently and became large scale operation after the introduction of mechanized trawling. About 80,000 - 1,00,000 species of molluscs are recorded from the world over and a total of 3271 species are recorded from India. They are represented in 220 families and 591 genera and the spectrum comprise of 1900 gastropods, 1100 bivalves 210 cephalopods 41 polyplacophores and 20 scaphopods (edible and ornamental) and 14 species of cephalopods are exploited on commercial basis in India.