Babarandage don Sarath Appuham, a 59-year-old fisherman, has worked at Negombo Lagoon since he was a teenager. Palpable differences in tide patterns and fish catches from climate change have complicated his work.
“We used to always go at 9am, then 1pm. It’s no longer that predictable,” Sarath told Al Jazeera.
They have to gauge conditions day by day now, he said. Sometimes the waves are too rough to venture out on.
Along Sri Lanka’s 1,700km (1,056 miles) of coasts and lagoons, artisanal fishermen cast and gather their nets several times a day. Nearly half of the country’s animal protein intake comes from fish, close to three times the global average.
The exact style of net employed and method of fishing varies village by village, born from generations of experience. For instance, in the Kalpitiya peninsula in western Sri Lanka’s Puttalam district, beach seine fishers (who traditionally work in teams of 15-30 people, using a single net to surround a school of fish) employ very fine “bait” nets to catch smaller fish like anchovies and sardines. Larger meshed ones (seer and thara nets) cast further south are conducive for catching mackerel and tuna. An estimated thousand beach seines operate across the country.
But amid the familiarity of these enduring practices, new tensions and stresses are stirring as Sri Lanka continues to undergo the worst economic crisis in its history.
Inflation is the most pressing challenge to small-scale fishers right now, said Santhalingam Thanusanth, a fisheries and fish biology scientist at the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA). The researcher estimated that about half of artisanal beach seine fishermen have adopted new methods, whether it is mechanisation or higher-tech gear.
The physical demands of fishing and its increasingly low pay have kept younger generations away. The resulting dual conundrum of underemployment and the labour shortage is threatening the continuity of traditional beach seine. Although tractors can replace men in terms of net hauling, individuals are still needed for most other tasks: to separate the catch, dry it and clean or repair the net.
“Most beach seine fishers are older men,” said Aruna Maheepala, a socioeconomic and aquatic resources senior scientist at NARA. “The work is too low-paying and hard to attract younger generations.”
Many have been opting to either stay at home or find odd jobs, but there is no clear employment trajectory for fishers to take. The government, facing a myriad of challenges, has been slow to offer support to fishermen.