The rapid expansion of the Fort Kochi beach, presumably due to relentless dredging of the shipping channel on the LNG terminal side, has claimed its first casualty — the iconic Chinese fishing nets!
Several Chinese nets, which have long dotted the shoreline on the beachside of the heritage town, have been sent into a state of disuse by fast-forming mud banks over the past couple of months.
While the Cochin Port is learnt to have agreed to address the issue using its engineers, the rate at which the mud bank is stretching out into the sea eastwards is giving owners and the labour force of the nets the jitters.
On the 12 nets deployed along Fort Kochi coast rests the livelihood of some 120 worried families. “Sand mounds that had begun to expand eastwards in March first claimed the net — the first from the beachside — owned by C.A. Joseph. Three more nets got wedged in mud in the next month and a half and the fifth could be rendered defunct any moment now. Collection of sea weeds over the last few days has compounded the issue. It’s worsening by the day, leaving the operators and owners concerned about their daily meal. At this rate, all nets will pack up in a few months’ time,” says Derson Antony, coordinator of the Kochi Chinese Net Owners’ Association. P.E. Vincent, 55-year-old labour-turned-owner of a Chinese net, says he hasn’t witnessed such a phenomenon in the last 40 years of his toil operating these giant nets, which till sometime ago were almost synonymous with beach tourism in Kerala.
“Traditionally the southwest monsoon used to be good for us, offering a good catch of thirutha (mullet) and vatta (trevally). Heavy dredging of the channel on the other side had stolen away the fish after which has come this disturbing phenomenon.”
As many as 10 people are required to operate these nets in two shifts and most of us are aged, decrepit for fishing at sea, he says. Mr. Antony says the solution would be to remove the mud collected around the nets by dredging before building a groyne to the west of the nets to prevent mud accumulation in future. “Besides being a means of livelihood for hundreds of people, they are the face of Fort Kochi from the point of view of tourism.”
