The present study was undertaken to analyse the extent of utilization of information communication technological tools by the fishermen for fishing in various coastal districts of Tamilnadu. An ex-post-facto research design was followed for the study conducted and a total of 400 fishermen in the selected four coastal districts were taken as sample. Among the selected four coastal districts in Tamilnadu, two districts (Nagapattinam and Kanyakumari) were taken as ICTs impact study area and two districts (Pudukkottai and Thoothukudi) were taken as non ICTs impact area (Control). The data were collected by administering the structured interview schedule through personal interview. Pearson's correlation, multiple regression analysis and t-test were used to process the data. A total of 26 independent variables were selected for the study to find the relationship with extent of utilization of ICTs for fishing by the fishermen. In ICT non - impact area (Control), majority of the respondents were belonged to the low category (40%) in the extent of utilization of Information Communication technologies, followed by medium (33%) and high (27%) category. In ICT impact study area, the majority of the respondents were belonged to the high category (64%) followed by the medium (20%) and low (16%) category.
A majority (66%.00) of the respondents in control area utilised GPS for finding the fishing locations, used PFZ data (17.00%), used android mobile phones with software applications (32.00%), used radio and television to access the information for fishing (44.00%), used other electronic gadgets (21.00%), used Echo sounder, SONAR and Radar (41.00%). In ICT impact area, the respondents utilised the GPS (73%.00) for finding the fishing locations, used PFZ data (21.00%), used android mobile phones with software applications (76.00%), used radio and television (89.00%), used other electronic gadgets (72.00%), used Echo sounder, SONAR and Radar (71.00%) for fisheries information.
The R2 implied that the independent variables can predict the extent of utilization of ICT tools for fishing by fishermen for control and ICT impact area with 79.8% and 89.2% accuracy respectively. The significance value of the paired t-test р=0.002; (t9=4.403, p=0.002) confirmed statistically that there is significance between the sample means of control and ICT impact area on the extent of utilization of each ICT tools by the fishermen for fishing.