Using a float of coconut flower stalks and pet bottles to attract cuttlefish and squids. Deep sea trawling during night hours. Such illegal measures to catch fish, thus causing the fast depletion of the marine wealth, are a matter of headache to the Fisheries Department as well as the Marine Enforcement officials in the south Indian state of Kerala.
“Though the practice of using coconut flower stalks was not that high in the northern Kerala, now many such cases are being reported and it is dangerous to the marine wealth,” said J Suresh Babu, assistant fisheries director here. “Apart from coconut flower stalks, many other banned methods are used by the fishermen, and it calls for a strong surveillance mechanism.”
The float of coconut leaves and coconut flower stalk get decomposed easily in the water which attracts the cuttlefish, especially in the mating and breeding season. So the fishermen spread such floats in the deep sea with the help of sand bags and wait for the prey.
Though in the earlier days, this method was used to help cuttlefish and squids to breed safely thus helping increase their population, nowadays it is used as an illegal method to catch fish, said officials.
“The racket is so strong that they use GPS to identify the place where the fish aggregating devices (FAD) have been floated and once the ripe male and female fishes are attracted here, they come and fish them,” he said.
This way many fishes that come for breeding are caught in the FAD, thus affecting their population. Not only the ripe fishes are caught using this illegal method, but also the eggs are destroyed, and that is why even the Interpol issued a note in this connection, said Suresh Babu.
Owing to the FADs aggregating larger spawning cuttlefish, the annual spawning stock biomass (SSB) was reduced from 17,862 tonnes in 2008 to 1467 tonnes in 2013, according to a study by the experts in the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI).
In the present condition, it is difficult for the fisheries department alone to monitor the illegal fishing because of the infrastructure constraints, said Dinesan Cheruvat, joint director of fisheries, Kozhikode.
“There are only five fisheries police stations, Vizhinjam, Neendakara, Vypin, Beypore and Kannur, to patrol along the coastal belt in the entire state and in many places they have to depend on a hired boat for surveillance,” he said. “So, in order to effectively handle the situation, we need the assistance of the Coastal Police and Coast Guard.”
Also with the ordinary fishing boats on rent the patrolling is difficult, he said.
What add to the woe is the increased instances of night trawling, as huge number of fishing boats are there in the Kerala coast, he added.
While the optimum capacity of the Kerala coast is to accommodate a maximum of 24000 boats, there are 35000 boats registered in Kerala, and in addition to this there are boats from other states doing fishing in our water, he said.
“It is more than we can bear, and so our request is that the government should stop giving new licences to fishing boats and also equip the fisheries department to strengthen the surveillance and monitoring mechanism,” he said. “If not it will result in the fast depletion of our marine wealth.”
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