MS Swaminathan Research Foundation will adopt two fishermen villages in Visakhapatnam district to ensure their sustainable development under its Bio-Village’ programme. Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of a seminar on State-level stakeholders meeting on upscaling of fisher friend mobile application and promoting marine fishery advisory’ on Thursday, MSSRF Executive Director N. Anil Kumar said: Around 98.5% of the fishermen in the State live in poverty. With its long coastline, he said, A.P. accounts for the highest marine catch and exports. Despite it, the fishermen live in penury. Explaining the concept of Bio-Village, he said that it was an integrated programme designed on the lines of UNSDG (sustainable development goal) programme. The idea is to address the empowerment of grassroots institutions by addressing six important components such as poverty eradication, removing hunger, education to all, health for all, gender equality and clean drinking water and sanitation so that the villages will be developed holistically, he said. The seminar was organised by Centre for Studies of Bay of Bengal (CSBoB), Andhra University, in association with MSSRF and INCOIS. Mobile App Speaking about the Fisher Friend Mobile App, Mr. Anil Kumar said it was developed to empower fishermen. The Indian coast has been seeing an erratic climate since the last few years and it will continue to worsen in the future due to global warming. In such a scenario, fishermen are vulnerable to the vagaries of nature. We have developed this mobile App which can be downloaded from Google Play store free of cost, in collaboration with INCOIS, said Mr. Anil Kumar, adding that the App can give real time information about the ocean and climate. According to Nagaraja Kumar, scientist, INCOIS- Hyderabad, the App would give the real time information on sea wave height, sea temperature, rain and wind forecast, maritime boundary and availability of fish stock in various parts of the ocean. The App has the information available with INCOIS and assimilates and disseminates it from various other sources, said Dr. Nagaraja. With the Bio-Village concept, we intend to address both physical and social vulnerability of the fisherfolk, said Mr. Anil Kumar said.