Hyderabad, Dec. 18 :     Fishermen in Andhra Pradesh are facing extinction. Pushed to the brink by mechanised boats and a booming pisciculture, most of the state?s traditional fishermen are looking for a way out into different states and professions. A study on occupational migration among fishermen and its impact on women and children, conducted by a Nellore NGO, reveals that 93 per cent fishermen have given up fishing or migrated to Orissa and Tamil Nadu. ?While 66 per cent of fishermen had been shifting during the last three years, the remaining 27 per cent left very suddenly last year,? said Uma of Jagriti, the NGO which did the research. The 974-km-long Andhra coast covering nine districts is dotted with 525 fishing villages with a population of five lakh. The migration of the fishermen started off as an offshoot of the ?aqua explosion?. Premier companies bought coastal and backwater land for digging aqua ponds and hired most fishermen for pisciculture. As the fish cultivation boomed, traditional fishing went on the decline. ?About 75 per cent of the fishermen have become agricultural labourers,? says Muralidharan who works for an NGO. Many have sold off their boats and their fishing gear. Most of the fishermen belong to the backward classes. Illiteracy is rampant: barely 12 per cent men and 8 per cent women can read or write. No child has studied beyond primary level, the Jagriti report says. Over 35 per cent of the women suffer from sexually transmitted diseases. There were numerous instances of harassment of women and prostitution. Despite all this, however, 71 per cent of the women are decision makers in the community in which the men stay away for three months on work, the report adds. The average marine fish production is reduced to 2.2 lakh tonnes at 50 meter depth, thanks to competition from mechanised boats. ?The per capita yield for fishermen in Andhra Pradesh is only around 300 kg per annum,? the report says. Traditional fishing has been dwindling since the invasion of the long mechanical trawlers from Taiwan and other South East Asian countries. Coastal Andhra Pradesh has also seen a rise in incidents of rape and robbery in the recent years. Seafood is also becoming more expensive. ?Since the fishing population is dwindling, seafood is becoming costlier even in the coastal belt as the yield of the trawlers is exported,? says Gopalakrishma of Jagriti which has conducted the study. The fishermen are not only bereft of a livelihood, but also of their staple food. ?There is no fish to eat,? they lament, being forced to buy vegetables and meat at exorbitant prices.