Chennai is often credited for its ability to pick itself up and start afresh after a catastrophe. The floods of December 2015, the cyclone of 2016… Life goes on. But often, the most affected are the lesser-privileged, and they take much longer to get back on their feet, one would assume. Wrong. If at all, they are the quickest to respond. The reason is simple: they cannot afford to dwell on what was lost. After the tsunami struck the city’s coastline on December 26, 2004, the fisherfolk, who bore the brunt of the ruthless waves, lost everything. Lives, their boats and nets, homes, their savings but it took them just six months to pull themselves together. And what was the first thing they did? They went back to the sea. The tsunami changed a lot of things. Among the most critical aspects being the nature of the coastline. Talk to any fisherman and he will tell you that there’s very few fish in the sea after the calamity. Our income has reduced considerably. I have a fibre-boat and can go only a certain distance into the sea unlike in a motor boat, says fisherman G. Ravichandran of Pattinapakkam. Before the tsunami hit, fishermen like Ravichandran would be able to land a good catch even in shallow waters. But the churning of the sea has resulted in the bigger fish moving deeper and beyond, he says. Many of us have changed professions. It’s good money to become plumbers, carpenters, painters… I’m looking for a job too. Let me know if you know of openings for a peon, he says. But not all of them think like Ravichandran. K. Kalavathy, who sells fish at Pattinapakkam, is seated at the same spot she did even before the tsunami. Her husband Kalai Sekhar works on a boat with four other men. Earlier, he would bring bigger varieties such as vanjiram, sudumbu, koduva, and thenga paarai by just taking his catamaran some distance, recalls Kalavathy. But after the tsunami, all the big ones have moved into deep sea. We can now find only smaller fish such as kara podi, nagara, kanankeluthy, and an odd sankara or two, she says. Kalavathy’s family lives in the same house in which water entered on that fateful day in 2004. She points to a line of houses standing dangerously close to the coastline. That’s where we live. The Government did allot houses for them in Semmancheri, but she, like most people she knew, opted to stay back. You see, we fisherfolk cannot survive anywhere else. The sea is where we make our living and we cannot run away from it even if it harms us. M.D. Dayalan, president, Indian Fisherman Association, explains the science behind the post-tsunami phenomenon. The tsunami changed the seascape drastically, he explains. What was once silty is now hard ground. Where there were rocks, there’s loose sand. As a result, the kind of fish that inhibit these waters has changed. Fishermen follow the mode of operation of their ancestors. I would spread out my net where my father and grandfather used to, says Dayalan. But now, since everything has changed, there’s a lot of trial and error. It will take years to get used to the new pattern. The shape and size of fish depends on the salinity, water pressure, and temperature of a particular spot of water, he explains. The Fishery Survey of India says that a lot of species have been destroyed after the tsunami, he adds. Our experience tells the same story. At a spot where we once caught 100, we are able to get just one or two. Some varieties such as the sudumbu have just disappeared. These last 12 years, fishermen haven’t been following a set pattern. But they’ll find a way; it’s all a matter of time.
2016, The Hindu