He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
Thirty-something Johnson looks old for his age. Deep furrows run down his sun-burnt face like disjointed lines in an atlas. Sun shows no mercy in this part of the country below the Tropic of Cancer, especially out in mid-sea.
Johnson and his three mates had been out deep in the Arabian Sea a day before. After 13 hours of toil, from mid-noon till midnight, they had managed to catch just Rs 250 worth of sardines and mackerels. Daily-wage labourers in Kerala earn much more.
“Last night was really bad, though we had ventured 30-40 miles into the sea,” says Johnson as sits repairing his torn fishing net at Vizhinjam harbour in Thiruvananthapuram early in the morning. Pointing to a line of vessels and oil tankers anchored on the horizon, he says, “These days we fear them more than the fury of the sea.”
Every other day, their fishing nets get ripped apart by some passing vessel, destroying their fishing gear and the day’s meagre catch. For the 8.8 lakh traditional fishermen along Kerala’s coast, the probability of encountering a vessel in the deep sea is a much-feared reality, threatening their lives and livelihood.
Both the state government and the Latin Catholic Church, who were woken up by the cold blooded murder of two fishermen at sea by marines in an Italian ship, have not been addressing the real problems our fishermen face. The large scale entry of trawlers and vessels into their territory has had its impact. Fishes along the coast have disappeared, forcing them to venture deeper into the sea, often into international waters.
The commercial use of bottom-scratching trawlers — originally used to decimate underwater mines during World War II – has nearly destroyed the coral reefs, planktons and the aquatic eco-system, the breeding grounds of fishes. The trawler’s spade, meant to trap fishes, routinely cut into these fragile nesting grounds lying close to the coast.
“Fishermen now have no option but to go into the deep sea to catch fishes like tuna and shark, which fetch good price in the international market,” says B Madhusudana Kurup, professor, Cochin University’s Industrial Fisheries Department.
The annual production of fish in the state has come down by 40,000 tonnes in the last nine years. However, the volume of fish caught by mechanized trawlers has doubled from around one lakh tonnes to over two lakh tonnes in the last 20 years. And traditional fishing has decreased by nearly 60 per cent in the same period, data with state directorate of fisheries showed.
Fisherfolk say the illegal entry of 300 hp high speed trawlers, which has fishing nets that can swoop the bottom, middle and surface of the sea and trap all kinds of fishes, will drive what is left near the coast further into the deep sea.
“The state has imposed a ban on trawling during monsoon months, but it has not taken action against these illegal trawlers,” says T Peter, president, Swatantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation.
2012 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.