The annual ban on trawling during the monsoon season is a fisheries management technique pioneered by Kerala, and now used by many coastal States.
As the rains that come with the southwest monsoon continue to pour down on Kerala, one large section of the State's working class will remain relatively idle — fishermen and fishworkes in the trawl sector of Kerala's fisheries. The annual 45-day ban on trawling in the State's waters, 12 nautical miles from the shoreline along the 590 km of its coastline, came into force on June 15.
As a fisheries management tool, a forced holiday for relatively destructive fishing techniques like trawling makes sense for the long-term conservation of marine resources. Bottom-trawling is a particularly destructive fishing technique, in which large nets, armed with steel weights or heavy rollers, are dragged across the seafloor by powerful mechanised boats to catch fish species in an indiscriminate manner. Though technically very effective, bottom-trawling also destroys everything in its path, including corals and sponges from the sea-floor, and demolishes the habitats on which fish and other diverse organisms depend.
Bottom trawls
That is why around the world there has been a growing movement against the use of bottom trawls, especially in tropical, multispecies waters. Kerala's annual monsoon trawl ban thus follows international trends in fisheries resource management, where fishing closures are used to revive nearly collapsed fisheries or sustain potentially over-fished fisheries. Honduras, Peru and Indonesia are some of the countries that use such annual fishing bans to manage their fisheries.
Kerala, with a coastline of 590 km and an adjoining continental shelf area of 39,139 sq. km., reported landings of 5.7 lakh tonnes of marine fish during 2009-10, which included over 300 different species, among which the commercially important ones number around 40.
Fisheries sector
Clearly, the fisheries sector is important for Kerala's economy. It contributes to about 8 per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product from the agriculture sector. There are around 11.43 lakhs people living in the State's fishing communities, and around 1.75 lakh fishermen in the traditional small-scale artisanal sector. It is also estimated that about 63,000 people are engaged in fishery-related activities.
Not surprisingly, the State government enacted the Kerala Marine Fisheries Regulation Act to enforce measures to regulate the number of fishing crafts in the State's waters and the resultant pressures on coastal and marine resources. According to this Act, the inshore area up to a depth of 50 meters has been demarcated for fishing by traditional fishermen using country crafts and the area beyond, for motorized boats and large mechanised vessels. The lacunae in the implementation of the Act — and campaigns by fishworkers' organisations like the Kerala Independent Fishworkers Federation — forced the Government to implement the annual monsoon trawl ban.
The principal motive of the ban is to conserve fast-dwindling fish stocks by ensuring the right conditions for resource and habitat rejuvenation. A United Nations report revealed the immense damage done by trawling to the ecosystems around seamounts, or underwater mountains, especially in regions that harbour particularly sensitive corals. The monsoon period is the spawning season for many varieties of fish, including shrimp, especially the highly valued karikadi variety. Apart from the ban's resource conservation value, the annual fishing holiday has another welcome spin-off — the potential to prevent violent physical conflicts between the artisanal small-scale sector, operating traditional craft such as the catamaran, and the mechanised sector, which comprises inboard-powered vessels.
Fish stocks
Most of the world's estimated 29 million fishermen are economically vulnerable to any decline in fish stocks, which directly affect their livelihoods, local economies and diet. According to the WorldFish Centre, a non-profit research body, fish stocks in Asia have declined by 70 per cent in the past 25 years.
Considering that nearly three-fourths of the world's fisher population are in the artisanal and small-scale sub-sector, which accounts for nearly half the global capture fisheries production, any measure to conserve fisheries resource should be welcome. Kerala's annual trawl ban set the trend in the late 1980s for a proactive, precautionary technique of fisheries management. It has now become a de rigueur annual event in the fisheries sector of most of India's coastal States.
The writer can be contacted at >kgkumar@gmail.com