| Fisheries biodiversity plays a vital role in maintaining aquatic ecosystem health, ensuring food and nutritional security, supporting economic development, and sustaining the livelihoods of millions of people worldwide. However, increasing anthropogenic activities have significantly altered freshwater and marine ecosystems, resulting in habitat degradation, declining fish populations, and loss of biodiversity. The introduction of exotic fish species has led to Competition with native species for food and habitat, hybridization, genetic erosion, and the Spread of diseases, thereby threatening indigenous fish diversity. River dams disrupt natural flow regimes, fragment aquatic habitats, obstruct fish migration routes, alter spawning and breeding grounds, and reduce recruitment of economically important migratory species such as hilsa and mahseer. Shore protection structures, including seawalls, groynes, and breakwaters, modify coastal habitats, interfere with sediment transport, and reduce the productivity of nearshore ecosystems, negatively affecting fish assemblages and artisanal fisheries. Although micro hydropower projects are often considered environmentally sustainable alternatives for renewable energy generation, they can alter stream hydrology, reduce environmental flows, and fragment river connectivity, leading to declines in native fish abundance. Offshore oil exploration and production further contribute to fisheries biodiversity loss through hydrocarbon pollution, underwater noise, habitat disturbance, and degradation of sensitive marine ecosystems. Collectively, these impacts threaten the sustainability of capture fisheries, reduce the livelihoods of fishing communities, and contribute to the long-term loss of aquatic biodiversity.
Keywords: Anthropogenic interventions, fisheries biodiversity, exotic fish species, river dams, coastal structures, micro-hydropower, offshore oil exploration
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