Big fish eat little fish in the South Asian seas

Big fish eat little fish in the South Asian seas

Might is right as large foreign trawlers net fish off South Asian shores, leaving little for impoverished local fisherfolk. Mahesh Uniyal of Inter Press Service reports.

NEW DELHI: The first thing V. Vivekanandan, head of a fishworkers federation in South India, looks up in the morning newspapers, is the rupee exchange rate for the Japanese yen.

In recent months, the soaring yen has pushed up the cost of small Japanese-build outboard engines popular with traditional fish boat owners along the country's vast southern coast.

For generation, indigent fisherfolk living on India's 7,200 km peninsular coast have gone out to sea for their food and livelihood on catamarans small outrigger boats.

But as the foreign boats trawling the coastal water for lucrative shrimp and prawn shrink the catch, traditional fisher families have to go out to sea in tiny craft with small, kerosene-powered imported engines.

Even then, they have found themselves crowded out. Many countries in South Asia now allow giant fishing vessels into their deep seas for a fee. Pakistan remains an exception, but local fisherfolk allege that foreign trawlers often enter Pakistan waters, depleting fish stocks.

The region's small-time fisherfolk complain that they are the danger of losing their livelihood and are being driven deeper into poverty.

Buying the engines, for example, means borrowing at high rates from loan sharks -- often pawning the family jewelry. The fisherfolk say though that the growing number of bigger vessels in their midst give them little choice.

"The Indian Ocean has the lowest productivity of all oceans," admits Vivekanandan, who is also a member of the international collective in support of fishworkers.

But he notes that it has now turned into a rich hunting ground for the large out-of-work fishing fleets, mainly in Western nations where strict bans protect stocks in the overfished waters.

Last year, New Delhi opened the deep seas on the advice of an expert panel to net the 1.3 million tons of fish which reportedly remain uncaught annually.

But fishworker activists say only 164,000 tons of the uncaught fish is commercially viable. They add that New Delhi overlooked the work of another study done by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that found there was very little scope for sustainable fishing in India's deep seas.

In Sri Lanka, the annual fish catch of 200,000 tons is 125,000 tons short of the estimated yearly requirement. Officials in the fisheries ministry in Colombo say fish catch has peaked in the coastal areas over the past eight years. They are now trying to exploit the deep seas with foreign aid. But there are reports of poaching off Sri Lankan waters by Korean and Japanese fishing vessels.

In Pakistan too, more than 200,000 traditional fishworkers inhabit the 900 km coastline, there have been many incidents of poaching by large Japanese and Korean vessels.

Large trawlers belonging to foreign companies are catching shrimps, prawns and crabs for the export market, but using equipment which damages the sea bed and other marine life, says Tahir Qureshi of the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

They are joined by locally owned vessels that employ migrant labor rather than the local fisherfolk to scour seas. These people are not bothered about sustainable fishing and totally disregard the ban on fishing in the spawning season, IUCN officials say. They use fine nets that catch even tiny fingerlings before they can fully mature.

"Overfishing is a problem in all developing countries and worries local people because their livelihood is threatened," say Qureshi. And the battle lines seem to be firmly drawn with the traditional fisherfolk on one side and large, mechanized, mainly foreign-owned vessels on the other.

Indeed, Vivekanandan's groups is part of the year-old National Fisheries Action Committee against joint ventures, representing 10 million Indian coastal fishworkers who are agitating against the opening of the deep seas to foreign vessels.

Under pressure from the campaign, New Delhi earlier this year announced a review of the deep sea fishing policy. But fishworker-activists are dissatisfied because the review panel does not give them representation.

Thomas Kochery, president of the National Fishworkers Forum that is spearheading the anti-foreign vessel campaign, says for the first time, traditional and small mechanized boat owner have sunk differences to fight a common enemy.

More than half the catch is netted in less than 50 metre-deep sea water, with 2.5 million tons caught by the 154,000 traditional boats.

But complicating matters these days is a vague definition of 'deep sea', say Vivekanandan. This could lead to clashes between foreign and local fishing interests particularly in India.

Monitoring will be difficult as there is confusion about where the high seas are. These were once defined as more than 200 meter-deep waters. But a recent government notification defines the deep seas as 22 km beyond the shores.

"India inshore waters (less than 50 meters deep) are definitely overfished, "says Vivekanandan. "I expect the tension (with foreign vessels) to be in the offshore (between 50 and 200 meters deep) region."

He says this is still the most unexploited and the foreign will have to work in them to make a profit.

-- IPS