There is no clarity as yet on the number of fishermen missing in Nagapattinam district due to Ockhi cyclone.
Initially, 357 fishermen were enumerated as missing based on the information furnished to the administration by the families. After the return of most of them so far, only 22 fishermen are yet to turn up, says a senior official of the Fisheries Department. “Even these 22 cannot be considered as missing. Many among them had promised their families that they would return from deep sea fishing only for Christmas and New Year,” the official said.
Fishermen in Nagapattinam district say the magnitude of impact caused by the cyclone in the Arabian sea off the coastline stretching from Kanniyakumari to Thiruvananthapuram was much more than the extent projected by the administration.
Due to dwindling catches, several hundreds of fishermen in the district have been in the employment of mechanised boat owners in Kanniyakumari district for years now. Dwindling catches had forced many in Nagapattinam district to depend on deep-sea fishing boat owners in Kanniyakumari for their livelihood. That explains the reason why Nagapattinam fishermen operating in the Bay of Bengal had fallen victims to Ockhi cyclone.
Those who had returned to Nagapattinam district were the ones who were rescued by the Coast Guard and Navy mid-sea or the ones who had reached Lakshadweep islands.
A number of fishermen who had gone for deep sea fishing from Thoothoor in Kanniyakumari district had borne the brunt of the sea’s depression in locations at more than 200 nautical miles off the shore.
“There is no scope for their survival as the searches by the Coast Guard and Indian Navy was confined to the stretch of sea within 50 nautical miles from the coastline,” Mathialagan, Joint president of Nagapattinam Deep Sea Boat Owners' Association said, adding: “The reluctance of the Central Government to permit Indian Navy to conduct searches deep in the sea at the time of natural disaster has caused severe consternation among the entire fishing community.”
He says 20 of the fishermen in Nagapattinam district he had employed for deep-sea fishing in his two boats fitted with gill nets from Thoothoor in Kanniyakumari district have not returned. Both his boats had sunk, he said, citing the information given by two of the workers rescued by another boat in deep sea during the cyclone.
The families of the missing fishermen have waited enough and have lost all hopes of their return, Mr. Mathialagan said.
