Fishermen say it may be too early to predict the impact of cyclone Ockhi on fisheries resources, but with fishing activities at a standstill for more than a week now, scarcity looms large even as favourite varieties like oil sardines, mackerels and anchovies have virtually disappeared from the local retail markets.
Frozen sardines from neighbouring States cost more than ₹100 a kg; mackerel price is about ₹200 a kg and smaller fishes, preferred by the vast majority of buyers, are not coming around, says a fish dealer at Champakkara market. He says that seer fish and pomfrets, on the upper end, are not available.
The current fish availability trend points to possibly an unusually bad Christmas-New Year season for those in the fisheries sector, he says.
Meanwhile, fishermen say that turbid waters will drive away fish shoals, making catch more difficult and effort-intensive in the coming days though a fisheries scientist here say that pelagic fishing could get easier in the short-term with fish aggregations in the upper level waters as the cyclonic action would have pushed up nutrient-rich sub-surface waters. He also says that cyclonic action would have resulted in habitat destruction, resulting in shifting of some of the fish varieties. Both these phenomena are short-term developments, he adds. These developments have been observed in the sea off the coast of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh after cyclonic action.
