The Thopumpady Harbour witnessed rather an unusual landing of big tuna and a few other fishes on Tuesday, as boats that ventured into the seas off the Lakshadweep Islands returned with big fishes of these species.
Some of them landed with over 750 big-sized fishes, which many termed was normal in the December-February season.
One among the boats was of Berkman, a fisherman who hailed from near Kaliyikkavila on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border. He spoke of how much of the fish was caught from the western side of the islands using hooks, since reliance on nets would cause “wastage” of the many varieties of fish. “Fishermen returned with substantial quantity of the catch in my 60-feet-long boat after spending over 20 days at sea,” he said.
A senior fisheries scientist based in the city said the fishermen would have caught the fish as they sighted them as a shoal. This and sardine have been arriving at fishing harbours in Kochi in substantial quantity since December. It could be because of the migration of fishes due to climate change, tidal variations, or in search of new pastures for food, he added.
Charles George of Matsya Thozhilali Aikya Vedhi, an independent trade union of traditional fishermen, said there was nothing unusual about such infrequent landing of major fish catch in the boats of traditional fishermen who hail mostly from Thiruvananthapuram. They venture beyond the Lakshadweep Islands in search of fish for weeks together. The flip side is that the selling price often decreases when there is improvement in supply.
Fishermen operating traditional mechanised canoes had been surprised by an abundance of oil sardine catch off the Kerala coast during the past few months. This was in stark contrast with the decline in catch of oil sardine and Indian mackerel during the past four years.