Marine fishery resources provide a lot of benefits to the society and environment especially in employment, income and nutritional security; however, the current issue is natural marine fisheries resource degradation due to anthropogenic activities. Therefore, managing the resources is necessary to maintain sustainability. In this regard, many marine fishery regulations were implemented by the government but there is a lack of reports on the effectiveness of regulations in sustainable management. Hence, assessment of efficiency of marine fishery regulative measures in sustainable development are required which may help to modify and form new regulative measures by policymakers.
The present study was attempted to analyse the role of marine fishery regulations in sustainable development. Gulf of Mannar coast of Tamil Nadu was selected as study area for the research because of its importance as a coastal zone. Stratified simple random sampling method was used with sample sizes of 450 fisherman, 100 policymakers and 100 policy implementers in the present study. Primary data were collected from the respondents on the perception of marine regulative measures through field survey and online survey by survey schedule and questionnaire. The collected data were analysed by scoring technique and the result revealed that prohibition of exploitation of resources by destructive gears, explosives and poison, restriction of number of fishing boats, restriction of number of fishing gears which exploit juveniles in the backwaters, estuaries and shallow inshore waters, mesh size regulation, minimum legal length for capture and seasonal ban on existing marine fishery regulations were significantly accepted by the fishermen of non-motorised, motorised and mechanised craft categories but it was emphasized by all the fishermen that prohibition of using fishing gear with a mesh size of 10mm (knot to knot) to prevent juvenile catch for conserving the marine fishery resources was considered the most effectual.